Nocturne
by Cebaje
Summary: Secrets do not sleep, not even in the vaults of Malfoy Manor. AU, Post HPB.
1. Prologue

A/N: I always find, during intense periods of writer's block, that writing fanfic can ease my woes. My track record of finishing things that I start is poor at best, but I don't expect this to be a mammoth tale. It's an exercise, really. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

This story takes place during the summer between HPB and DH. It has AU moments hither and thither. It's a Snapefic.

NOCTURNE: Prologue

At dusk they congregated; huddled like storm-wise crows against a bruised purple sky. They gathered in the shadows of the gray moors behind the manor, dark dead grass sparse between ancient tombstones thrusting out of the earth like jagged teeth.

Narcissa, resplendent in her mourning, lifted a lacy black hand to dab, with prim sadness, at an invisible tear. Lucius, his silver hair unbound, kept an iron hand on the shoulder of his toddling son. Draco knew with the prescient clarity of childhood that now was not the time to tug at Mum's skirt and beg for a turn on his shiny new toy broom.

Uncovered were the heads of the Malfoy family, yet in the indeterminate near-distance were perhaps a dozen more black-clad mourners, faces cowled and bent towards the ground. Wizard funerals were about the family -- different from a Muggle burial, where lots of people whose names you cannot quite recall express heartfelt sorrow, and then march to the kitchen to dine on the food that friends and neighbors have brought to you. The Malfoys followed the traditions of old, even if their contemporaries were beginning to veer more towards funerals-as-a-free-firewhiskey-trough. They would never know the names of those who joined them in paying respect.

Five house elves appeared from over the hill. In a house with fewer financial assets, the coffin would be charmed alight by members of the family. But it was not expected of that poor, frail, fragile Narcissa -- a weeping ghost of a woman, held together only by the strength of her husband -- would have the fortitude to transport her daughter's body.

Through the rolling mists came the silently weeping elves, the shell-pink, child-sized coffin suspended a few feet above their bald, knobbly heads. Bearing their gruesome cargo, they approached the thatch of empty earth 'round which the surviving Malfoys gathered. Lucius murmured a word, and the coffin floated, with surprising fluid grace, down into the deep, dark hole.

For the benefit of her audience, Narcissa let out a ladylike, audible sob. Draco, having been freed from his father's grasp, tucked his small figure next to his mother's side, only flinching a little when she knelt down and crushed him against her body. She was cold, he thought, as he put his little arms around her. She smelled of lavender, and something sharp -- lemonflower, like the potion-oil they used to keep his door locked fast at night. Eariler that year he had begun having nightmares, and would bring his tears and trembling to Mum and Dad, who did not seem to sleep, and were always staring at each other, eyes burning, still dressed, when he went into their room at night.

"Mum?" he said quietly. "She's going to be all right. You said." Draco tilted his head, missing the swift, cutting look that Lucius directed at his wife.

"Yes," said Narcissa, avoiding her husband's gaze. "She won't be with us anymore. But she'll be all right."

"Good," said Draco. He gave his mother another awkward hug, his chin tucked over her shoulder. He looked out across the field at the other people gathered in a half-circle behind them. A strong, brisk wind kicked up, bringing with it the distinct brittle threat of snow. One of the mourners' black veils rippled, and Draco caught a glimpse of a hooked nose and sallow, yellow-white skin before the cowl was drawn down again. I

"Mister Snape is here," he told his mother. He thought it might make her feel better; she was always more friendly and smiling whenever Mister Snape was around.

"Quiet, Draco," said Lucius. Draco swallowed hard shut his mouth. He extracted himself from his mother's grasp, and they turned to watch as sheets of damp earth pattered down onto the surface of the coffin.

"Bye-bye, Ariadne," said Draco cheerfully. He felt his mother's hand tighten around his own as the sun set and the ground swallowed his sister.


	2. Accidental Stars

A/N: For those of you following along...thanks for joining me. I am hopelessly addicted to TS Eliot's poetry, so he will be quoted often, if not with each installment.

Nocturne: Accidental Stars

_As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,  
As the mind deserts the body it has used._

-- TS ELIOT

Even if he were the last bleeding wizard on earth, even if the stars fell and gathered at his feet, even if the oceans rose and swallowed him whole, Severus Snape would never admit that he loved Malfoy Manor.

Perhaps -- no. Love was a word too freely spoken, an emotion that Snape had chosen to abandon like an old pair of boots worn past usefulness. It hadn't been a conscious choice, of course, no man wakes one day, despite the measure of the tragedy that weighs on his heart, and says "Today I denounce love in all its forms, and shall forever wander this earth alone, tormenting children because they remind me of the soul I have abandoned." That would be silly, and a little too dramatic. Though some might say that Snape was fond of drama, and wielded it as deftly as a quill.

So he did not love Malfoy Manor. He enjoyed it, as he enjoyed a very few things. And considering that his own house was...well, to put it lightly, under constant Ministry surveillance, he needed a place to lie low for a while.

Not that there wasn't Ministry surveillance on Malfoy Manor, but the Manor had the luck of being protected by wards so old and complex that a horde of Death Eaters riding pink elephants could hold a polo match on the peacock-adorned grounds without anyone being the wiser. Snape's own abode was not so fortunate.

Selfish reasons aside, he was bound to this place. With Lucius incarcerated and Narcissa on Bellatrix duty (she required supervision these days; as Voldemort loosened his hold on his minions, Bellatrix tested the limits of his patience on a daily basis, and she had to be watched rather closely) and Draco with that slug of a boy, Nott, and his family for the summer, there was no-one to watch Malfoy Manor. And watched it must be, for the Manor, as old as it was, had the nasty habit of disappearing, or eliminating entire wings, or mysteriously sprouting a fifth tower if left uninhabited for too long.

And who but Snape -- childless, alone, with no real ties to anyone besides the Dark Lord-- could be a better guardian? And besides that, the manor had the ability to make one -- not forget, but cease to care so deeply about things that might otherwise be troubling. Lucius had explained it to Snape once, many years ago, over a particularly decadent dinner and equally potent wine. Something to do with the spells of protection that his great-great-Great Grandfather had strewn across the grounds. The way Lucius described it, his long-removed ancestor had woven a knitted band of magic so thick that it had not, as most warding spells do, weakened over time. Each Malfoy heir that followed would dutifully add his own spells, and the next his own, and so on, each thinking that he was merely repairing the broken or threadbare charms.

Could magic be seen with the naked eye, the manor might now resemble a garden allowed to grow wild, with ivy climbing the rosebushes, and pansies mixed in the daises, and great trees crawling with clematis. Modern spells did not always blend seamlessly or lie quietly atop their older counterparts – which inevitably meant that there would be some side effects. The Malfoys were by now immune, but any visitor to the manor would find, at least for the first day or so of his stay, that he could not quite recall all those things that usually pressed against his mind.

Snape needed that. He needed it desperately. He needed it so badly that the sheer anticipation of relief spun around inside his head and forced him to lean against the iron gates of the estate.

He cleared his vision with a shake of his head, glancing around once to see if his arrival had been marked. There was likely a Locarium on the manor – in fact, Snape was certain of it. He could smell the faint metallic residue that the spell left on the air.

So he moved quickly, withdrawing his wand and tapping curls of iron in a pattern of apparent randomness. Here, here, there, one-two-three and – click. The hinges squealed theatrically, and a few tendrils of ivy rustled and snapped as he shuffled inside the gate.

As soon as the gate groaned its way closed again, Snape heard the distinct *pop* of Apparation. He looked down to see the house elf, prostrate, at his feet.

"Yalli welcomes Master Snape, and says thank you, sir, on the behalf of Lord Malfoy. Have you any luggage, sir?" The elf's strident voice was mercifully muted by the grass.

"No," said Snape, not bothering to explain the spell he used to make all of his belongings fit into a small velvet satchel he carried in his pocket. Already he felt lighter, as though the iron hand that gripped his chest was loosened. He almost shut out the vision of Albus Dumbledore's eyes. Almost.

"Very good, sir. Yalli will take you to your room, sir."

By now the elf had scrambled up off the ground, and was motioning (with averted eyes the size of teacups) for Snape to follow him.

Snape was only too happy to oblige, as each step closer to the manor pried another vise-like finger away from his heart.

- -

They gave him the south tower, the one that overlooked the vast rolling moors behind the house. The amount of stairs that he had to climb in order to reach his suite seemed somewhat excessive – he knew for a fact that there was an entire row of bedrooms in the central wing of the castle that were all unoccupied and just as richly appointed as this one. Perhaps the height and view was not so much for aesthetics, though; perhaps it was intended to afford him a better vantage to watch for possible unwanted visitors.

He had never been in this part of the manor before. All his visits had usually been conducted in either the grand dining hall or in Lucius' smaller, private quarters, in the pipe-room just off of the bedroom he no longer shared with his wife. There was the ballroom, too, where the Malfoys held their annual Hallow's Eve masque, but Snape never spent much time in there. He had seen it, once or twice, but on such occasions he was more likely to be tucked away in some unobtrusive parlor, avoiding Narcissa and her penetrating, accusatory stares. No matter how much he tried, there was little he could do to sway her opinion of him.

Well, until now, anyway. A vision of the Hogwart's tower, that final fateful tableau, flashed across his eyes. He considered it, and let the memory pass without incident. That was progress – it used to be burned into his brain, and he could not escape it, not even in his dreams. He hoped Narcissa was good and convinced of his loyalty now. He hoped she choked on her guilt.

That thought nearly elicited the rare phenomenon of laughter, but he beat it back before it had time to germinate.

His suite was done up in the traditional colors preferred by the Malfoy clan – silver, black, red. It had a disturbingly gothic quality – the wrought-iron cathedral bed, the blood-red curtains dressed in black lace, the silver gargoyles perched on the molding of the walls. Was his image so dour that Malfoy thought _this _room would be the best fit? It might surprise anyone who cared to know that Severus Snape's favorite color was green, and not the deep hunter hue of the Slytherin house. The origin of his preference could not be given proper respect; not in this house, where his feelings seemed pale ghosts lost inside an unfamiliar haunt. He could not, right now, remember her eyes. For the time being, it was perfectly acceptable. He turned his attention back to his quarters, his mouth twisting at the macabre splendor of it all.

Still, the room did not want for space or light. The southern-facing wall bore three tall windows in its curved face, and the bed was large enough to accommodate three or four sour Potions Masters. There was a small, comfortable sitting room well-stocked with brandy and a hearth, and the bathroom boasted a stone tub sunken at least five feet into the floor.

He would be comfortable here, though he doubted he would spend much time in his rooms. Lucius had a full apothecary, a stock-room the size of Hagrid's cottage full of rare and exotic potion supplies, and a potions room that rivaled the dungeons at Hogwarts. Not that anyone in the Malfoy family spent an inordinate amount of time brewing – they usually sent owls with their orders, and Snape would have their requests delivered in a fortnight.

He would make good use of the facilities here, even more so than at Hogwarts because the Malfoys had no qualms about possessing certain ingredients that the Ministry deemed too dangerous for the average wizard. And there were things that the Dark Lord required of him, potions that could be drawn together with ease in a place like this, with all the ingredients already at his disposal.

All was – as well as it could be. Having unpacked what meager luggage he had brought (most people would _not _be surprised to learn that exactly one hundred percent of his wardrobe was black), Snape set out to explore Malfoy Manor.

He was not a single step out of the door when a house elf appeared.

Blasted Merlin-damned annoying creatures.

"Master Snape wishes to come down, sir? Where should Yalli lead him?"

"Nowhere," said Snape. "You are dismissed."

He pushed past the elf, but was distracted by a noise that sounded like a cross between a cat being strangled and a child trying its hardest not to scream. Before he could stop himself, he had turned around to discover the source of his disruption. The elf had one ear in each hand and was, as far as Snape could tell, trying to remove them from her head. Her (her? Sure. Why not.) eyes were crossed and an oddly pointed tongue thrust out from between tightly clenched lips.

"Please don't explode," Snape said mildly.

"Yalli – won't – sir –" she panted, tears of pain welling in her protuberant eyes. "But – she – has – been – dismissed – and – Lady Malfoy – told her – to take Master Snape – wherever he wanted to go."

This was exactly why Snape never wanted a house elf. Give them one order that in any way conflicted with a previous one and they set about trying to off themselves.

"Yes. But I do not need your help. I can find my way around. Just have some dinner up here in an hour or so. You are dismissed." He continued on down the stairs.

Yalli squealed, swallowed, and disappeared.

- -

Thirty minutes later, Snape was beginning to wish that he had not been so quick to dismiss his guide. In looking for the library, he had somehow managed to find himself wandering back and forth between a wide, musty corridor with empty torch-plates and a narrow hallway that he was fairly certain lead to the family vaults. Every time he turned the corner, he found himself in one hall or the other, even though he would have sworn to anyone listening that he had turned a _completely different way _this time. He couldn't even find the stairs that had lead him down here – the place was a tangled labyrinthine maze, most likely designed for the exact purpose to which Snape was now subject.

After ten minutes of fruitless searching, he decided to try one of the doors. He had not opened any in the first place, but perhaps he _had, _and the manor, in the sly way of someone who wishes to teach an arrogant new acquaintance a lesson, had made him forget.

He chose the nearest door. He was back in the narrower of the two hallways, the one he thought led further down into the bowels of the house. It was a great, heavy metal door, with a business-like knob shaped, of course, like a coiled serpent. He closed his fingers over the handle and pulled. The door was locked.

POP! Snape's luck was so proliferate that there were _two _elves this time. They had somehow managed to squeeze themselves in between the door and his knees.

"Sir! Master Snape, sir! You cannot go in there." It was disconcerting how they both spoke in unison, and even more so when Snape deigned to look down and realized that, even for their indeterminately featured species, these two elves appeared to be identical.

"I am to understand, by way of your Master's letter, that I was to have full privileges of this house. All doors are open to me. Why not this one?"

The elves cowered and covered their faces with fingers roughly the width of twigs. He was pleased to see that his voice was just as intimidating to house elves as it was to twelve year old children. Now, if only someone could find him a kitten to drown…

"Yes, sir, of course, but we are cleaning the vaults, sir, with very bad potions that might hurt him," said the elves through their fingers.

"Nonsense," said Snape. Despite the mild haze of blindness that the house had cast upon him, he knew a lie when he heard one. And that other elf had seemed so distressed when he told her he would not need her help. And his room was as far away from this part of the castle as any could be. And he smelled…

"Stelloc serum?" He murmured, leaning down to drawn in another lung full of the faint scent. As he brought his face down, he noticed, for the first time, the both of the elves wore knotted cords around their necks. A suspiciously vial-shaped bump appeared beneath the ragged fabric of their salvaged "clothes."

"What do you carry around your neck, elf?" he asked. The twins shared a horrified glance. Even on their stupid, dim-looking faces, Snape saw an expression that suggested they _never thought this would ever happen._

"Uhm," they said. Snape rolled his eyes and reached down and in one swift movement tried to remove the cords and their cargo.

Only to find, not surprisingly, that the cords would not budge. They either shrank as he tried to pull them over a trembling, whimpering face, making it impossible to remove them that way, or felt as strong as metal links if he tried to break them. He tried both ways – more than once, heedless of the gasping, choking, and squeaking that ensued.

After a few tries, he gave up, knowing that there was no way that the vials could be removed by force. And now he was intrigued. There was no reason he could imagine that two house elves would need to wear potion vials around their necks on indelible cords.

"Out with it," he said. "Which one's Stelloc Serum and which one is Ouvre Oil?"

Another glance passed between them; a silent communiqué. And then at once they cocked their heads back, whimpered, and brought their foreheads together with a sickening crunch.

They both fell unceremoniously to the ground, completely unconscious. Self-punishment gone awry, Snape thought, as he leaned down and examined the vials.

The one on the left was Stelloc Serum – an untrained eye would never notice the very slight yellowish hue to the otherwise crystal-clear liquid. It was the oil of lemon-flower that gave the potion that color – and its distinct smell. Its sole purpose was to keep a locked door locked, and it could not be bested by strength or spells.

Only the Ouvre Oil could counteract the effects of Stelloc – you never made one without the other, as they were made from the same base ingredients, then separated into exact halves. Each half-measure was poured into a cauldron of equal size – only one was lined with negatively charged magnets, and the other with their counterpart. Both mixtures were brought to a boil, and at the last moment you added oil of lemon-flower to the Stelloc cauldron, to keep the mixture from turning into a solvent that might eventually erode the lock.

It was an incredibly complex pair of potions to brew – Snape had only made them once in his life, long before he had taken up the mantle of Potions Master at Hogwarts. He had been in the business then of brewing up complicated potions and selling them to local vendors.

So – what was it that Malfoy had hidden down here that he did not trust Snape to see? Whatever it was, he clearly had not communicated his orders properly to his staff. Half an hour in the manor and Snape was already about to discover the darker secrets of his temporary home.

He gingerly lifted one of the elves and pulled the tiny stopper out of the vial of Ouvre Oil. He picked up the vial and held it between a thumb and forefinger. Neither of these potions were hazardous to humans; he wouldn't recommend drinking them, of course, but to get a drop or two on naked skin would not do any damage. So he upended the bottle and let a single drop of the thick, viscous liquid drip out onto his forefinger. He applied the serum to the keyhole just beneath the serpent doorknob, waited a moment, and then heard the distinct sound of a latch sliding out of place.

He drew out his wand and muttered a quick spell that would keep the contents of the vial from spilling into his pocket without the benefit of the stopper, and slipped the bottle into his pocket.

Now the door opened with ease. A stone staircase, worn and crumbling, stretched down from the doorway, and was lost at the fifth step in the shadows and the darkness. Out came Snape's wand again, and a muttered _Lumos _charm. He held the familiar blue-white light out before him and descended the hidden stairs.

- -

There was some kind of archaic, predictable magic at work here. In fifteen minutes, Snape had not yet reached the bottom of the staircase. He made countless turns and came upon countless landings that went up a step or two, then turned to descend further into the darkness. If this was not magic, then he must now be nearly a mile beneath the earth. And since that was less plausible that the idea that the staircase was good and charmed to discourage potential intruders, he knew he must be missing some vital clue that would bring this pointless trek to an end.

He paused a moment at a landing and leaned against the wall. Raising his wand, he took a good look at his surroundings. The ceiling was low, paved with the same mossy stones that made up both the walls and the staircase. There were no fissures in the surface, none that he could see, anyway, that might suggest a hidden door accessible only by tapping the stones in the correct order. Such things were usually detectable by well-trained wizards.

It was so dark that even the light of his wand could barely penetrate the shadows; he lowered it away from his face and saw that he could only see a step or two beneath him before the darkness triumphed again.

And then, of course, he figured it out. Rolling his eyes at his own stupidity, Snape leapt from the landing into the indeterminable blackness.

He did not tumble down an endless flight of stairs, as you might have expected. Instead, his feet landed squarely on solid ground, no more than three feet from the spot on which he had previously stood. The staircase was charmed, and the only way to reach the bottom was to throw oneself into the darkness.

He immediately sensed that the passage had widened; he felt a phantom breeze circling above his head, gently stirring the hair around his neck. His footsteps echoed as they had not before, and somewhere in the near distance he could hear the faint drip-drip-drip of water hitting a puddle in the stone. To his left, he saw by the light of his raised wand, was a row of doors. He had found the vaults. Now, discovering which one was important enough to keep locked with Stelloc Serum would be easy enough for him – he merely closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. In a moment he detected the sharp, citrusy scent – a few doors down, the third – no, fourth one in. He drew the Ouvre Oil out of his pocket, undid his stoppering charm, and applied a drop to the lock. As before, the lock clicked, and Snape opened the door.

His first thought was one of surprise – this room was not completely dark. Half-globes the size of his fist decorated the walls in evenly-spaced intervals, putting out the same quality of light that the tip of his wand emitted. The resulting glow had a ghostly quality that was more blue than white.

His surprised deepened when he stepped further into the door and recognized the contents of the vault.

It was a bedroom. A child's bedroom, or so the décor suggested. There was a flower-shaped red rug in the center of the room, and in between the lights on the walls hung tapestries depicting various chimerical scenes. A lone Knight dispatching an immense dragon, a trio of mermaids combing out their sea-weed hair, a fairy prince riding a unicorn through a purple wood. A narrow bed stood in the corner; large enough to fit an adult, yet still outfitted in the faded pastels that children often preferred. Several stuffed animals were strewn across the floor, interspersed among them were little wooden dolls with tangled hair stained black by ancient grime.

To the left of the bed, between a hanging of Rapunzel in her tower and a house made of gingerbread, was another door. This one was just barely cracked, revealing nothing of its contents but more eerie, bluish light.

For the first time since his arrival, Snape felt uneasy. This was not, in a thousand years, what he would have expected to find hidden in the depths of Malfoy Manor. A sleeping dragon, perhaps; a torture chamber filled with half-starved Muggles and Half-bloods, a centuries-old grimmoire that gave details on how to summon the devil himself – but not this, not this strange room that appeared, for all intents and purposes, to belong to a little girl.

Just then, a pair of feet appeared beneath the other door. Snape froze; he was well inside the room now, and could not escape by merely pulling the door shut and forgetting everything he had seen. In the space between his quickly-drawn breath, the far door swung open, and he saw who was on the other side.

He recognized her immediately. Even though more than ten years had passed, even though she had been a child then, she was as familiar to him as her pale-faced younger brother. Only she was supposed to be dead, buried in the Malfoy family plot at the tender age of seven. That was – ten, twelve, thirteen years ago?

"Ariadne," said Snape. The girl looked up from her feet; her almond-shaped gray eyes landed on the intruder. She started screaming.


	3. Troubled Midnight

A/N: Ah…I did not know this was going to happen. :x

Whitehound, a valid point. However, those elves were always perceived by children who saw them as more than just servants. Severus Snape makes no distinctions. He's only observant when it suits him. ;)

Nocturne: Troubled Midnight

_Regard that woman  
Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door  
Which opens on her like a grin._

_You see the border of her coat is torn_

_And stained with sand_

_And you see the corner of her eye_

_Twist like a crooked pin._

_TS Eliot_

She started screaming; a guttural, ripping, heaving sound; she doubled over with the force of it, the tips of her white fingers brushing the stone floor. Snape stumbled backwards a pace or two, resisting the childlike urge to clap his hands over his ears.

"_Stupefy!_" He ground out between clenched teeth. The silence rang in his ears like bells. Unconscious, the girl slumped forward on her knees and elbows, head bowed between her hands in a manner that reminded Snape of a supplicant in prayer.

He pocketed his wand and took a step further into the room, hesitant, cautious, as a hunter approaching a trap he does not trust to properly restrain his prey. In the weird blue light of the wall-globes, it seemed that she was a single washed-out streak of pallor against the stone; no form, no substance, nothing that marked her as human.

Ariadne Malfoy. Snape had been one of the few people who attended her funeral some thirteen years ago, one of the few who had watched the impressive show, the coffin making a stately disappearance into the earth, Narcissa weeping with all the heartbreaking grief of one who has lost a piece of herself.

A fall – that was the story of her demise. She and Draco had been playing, and in a single careless moment her small feet had slipped on the rug and she'd tumbled, end over end, down one of Malfoy Manor's many treacherous flights of stairs. Not even magic could heal a broken neck and shattered spine; so they pronounced her lost, and laid her little body to rest.

Snape wondered if Draco even remembered his sister – or, rather, if he knew that his sister had been locked in the vaults all this time.

It was rather obvious to Snape why the Malfoys would feign the death of one of their own. Ariadne, for all her excellent breeding, must have been a Squib. And rather than love her anyway, and raise her amongst the wealth and privilege of her birthright, they had chosen to lock her away and tell the world that she had perished. There would have been no owls on her eleventh birthday to indicate her continuing existence, for the book of Hogwarts did not recognize, in its ancient wizened tomes, the education of a Squib.

In one swift movement, Severus lifted the girl and laid her out on the narrow bed. She felt unconscionably light for someone her age, and as he lay her down and her threadbare shift fell against her body, he saw why – she possessed none of the curves of youthful womanhood. No surprise – denied sunlight, exercise, proper food, she had grown naught but in height, and the added inches had merely stretched her slender form until she was nearly gaunt. Her wrists were as thin and brittle as a child's, and he could see, through the slightly open collar of her buttoned gown, the sharp outline of her clavicle standing out beneath skin so white as to nearly be translucent.

She very easily could have been a ghost, so little did she resemble a living human being. There was no hint of color in her concave cheeks. For a moment, Snape wondered if the Stupefy spell might have killed her. It was not far-fetched; on the very old or very weak, the spell could have lethal side effects. He took two fingers to the place where her neck and jaw joined, feeling for a pulse – there it was, faint, fluttering, but unmistakable.

Well, that was a relief. Though was it really murder if the victim was already supposed to be dead? And now that she _wasn't _dead, what was he supposed to do with her?

Leave her down here, of course. She would wake up from her strange, violent sleep, forgetting the man in her dreams in an instant. It would be as if it never happened. Ariadne would remain dead to the world. What difference would it make to her? The years and years of monotony had most certainly convinced her that her old life was a dream; that this room was the whole world. So, Snape reasoned, she would not miss what she did not recall. He resisted the strange, sickening urge to cover her with the faded woven throw at the foot of the small bed, choosing instead to stand, and dust his hands against his robes.

She won't remember, he reminded himself. Won't remember a thing.

He made his way to the door. Behind him, a faint rustling sound, the whispered stirrings of a body ill at rest. He heard her sigh; a half-breath, the quick rise and fall of her chest beneath her gown. And then, his demise: soft, unavoidable, her dreaming voice as light as her body –

"Please."

Snape felt something heavy settle across his shoulders, as if he had just been bestowed a mantle that he had hoped would be someone else's burden to wear. He glanced back and saw that she was still out, but not for much longer – a finger twitched, her head shifted a bit to the side, she let out another sigh.

Even through the dulling effect that the house had on his mind, a tiny spark of feeling crept in. The eyes he endeavored so hard to forget – lively, blue, set beneath a cacophony of unkempt brows, youthful even in a face lined with age – came back to him in an instant. Pleading eyes, eyes that both forgave and forgot, eyes that could, on any occasion, persuade him to do the impossible. Was it so hard to believe that Albus Dumbledore, in his infinite, far-reaching wisdom, had not only foreseen his death, but the life that continued beyond his own? Snape knew full well that his tasks were not finished yet, that he still had debt to pay – _insufferable Potter – _but this…

"Not through with me yet, are you?" Snape muttered, resentment and respect playing their discordant melodies in his head. He shook away the fog, but the spark remained. So he turned around and closed the door, pulled up one of the tiny chairs strewn about the room, and waited for her to wake.

He did not have to wait long. The unconscious stirrings of her troubled sleep soon coalesced into a single, swiftly-drawn gasp that had her sitting bolt upright in the bed. She glanced around, her attention immediately drawn to the stranger, the anomaly, the black and white creature – _death, danger, death – _that haunted her dreams. Eyes wild and wide, her mouth unhinged in a silent scream as she scrambled back into the far corner of the bed, her back pressed against the Rapunzel tapestry.

"Calm," said Snape. Not many people knew that his voice possessed equal measures of softness and stone. "I'm not going to hurt you."

His intention, of course, was to prevent her from giving herself a heart attack; instead she began sobbing, and drove her balled fists into her watery blue-grey eyes.

"Please, please, please," she whimpered. Snape felt something tugging in the general vicinity of his chest; in the hollow space where most supposed he had no heart.

"Ariadne," he said. "Ariadne."

In mid-gasp, she stopped long enough to pull her trembling hands away from her face.

"I am not going to hurt you," he said.

"Hurt?" She parroted. "You?"

Oh, for Merlin's sake. Of course she would have all but forgotten how to talk. She had been but a child when they imprisoned her, and with no-one to teach her, no-one to speak to her, she had learned nothing more than what she had known at seven years old. And over the years, that, too, would have begun to fade away, as her mind, to protect itself, slowly chipped away at all her human memories, adapting to this tiny, lonely life. It was a wonder that she was not completely mad. As this thought came, Snape's eyes were drawn to a piece of furniture he had not seen before. A bookshelf, sagging under the weight of its cargo, stood against the eastern wall.

So, there _was_ a spot of human decency left in Lucius Malfoy's heart. Snape's eyes swept the titles of the books overflowing from the small shelf – mostly children's stories, fairy-tales, interspersed here and there with magical textbooks – most likely, Draco's old books from Hogwarts. A wry smile threatened the corners of Snape's mouth. Even after all this time, they had not given up thinking that, just maybe, Ariadne's magical talent was merely latent, not non-existent. He wondered if she had been visited, occasionally, by one parent or another, if they threw spells at her to see if she would defend herself.

No, he realized swiftly as he turned back to look at the girl. This was a child – _woman, _he reminded himself, she would be twenty years old now – who had not laid eyes on another human being in a very, very, very long time.

"Ariadne," he said again. "Do you understand me?"

She nodded, her eyes darting quickly to the books, then back to him. Well, thank the Gods for small favors. Even if she could not longer speak properly, at least she still retained some measure of comprehension.

"The Princess was lovely, she sang like a bird," said Ariadne. Snape shook his head. What?

"She could charm any man without speaking a word," she continued. "From her ivory tower she called them to arms –"

"And they came, because no-one resisted her charms," Snape finished, the end of the poem coming back to him in a rush.

Nursery rhymes. The eldest daughter of Lucius Malfoy spoke only in nursery rhymes. If Snape himself were a literary man, he might have called it poetic justice.

Ariadne's attention wandered away from him. At once, the lucidity was gone from her eyes; they were glazed with some far-away thought, as though her body had given her mind permission to travel on its own to places that it could not go.

"She looked down on her people, all gathered below

and she said, 'I've a secret I must let you know

My father is false, and he keeps me up here

To lose me to marriage is his greatest fear

So I challenge you, knights, and I offer this prize:

If you bring me is tongue, his liver, his eyes,

I will come down at once, and leave as your bride.'"

Her diction was impressive, Snape had to admit. But now he was beginning to think that there was something more to her imprisonment than a mere absence of magic. She seemed…addled somehow, and not in a way that could be attributed to years and years of solitude.

Lost in her own world, rocking back and forth, she recited the gruesome rhyme to its conclusion, the one that most parents avoided. Every knight in the kingdom fell upon the princess' father, and tore him to pieces, and each came to the tower bearing his own morsel; and on seeing this the princess laughed, and came down from her tower. And as she set her dainty foot upon the ground she was revealed for what she really was; a terrible dragon under an enchantment, held captive only because the king had swallowed her heart. When his blood spilled and stained the ground, she was free to wreak havoc on the kingdom, and did so for many years until a brave knight won her heart again, and lured her to a cliff. Through his deception he blinded her, and she leapt off the cliff into the sea. And because dragons are creatures of fire, she was extinguished, and the land was free of her torment for ever.

As she chanted, Snape watched her; noting the flawless staccato rhythm of her recitation. She began trembling, from the tips of her fingers, then her hands, up to her shoulders…and something odd was happening to her eyes. The far-away look became something…different, solid, as the film over her eyes hardened, and the blue shone through like a sapphire struck by the sun.

And suddenly, Snape couldn't breathe. It was as if all the air in the room had been sucked out at once. He gasped, choking, turned for the door – but it was shut behind him – had he shut it himself? The world turned grey around the edges, and he stumbled, clutching his throat.

This was no Squib. This was…something else. His thoughts buzzed and pinged around inside his head, refusing to adhere to one another. He raised his bloodshot eyes to the girl, who was no longer chanting. She canted her thin face at him and slid off the bed. Her bare feet were filthy…Snape noticed them because he was now on the floor, on his hands and knees, clawing uselessly at the rug. His fingernails bent back; scarlet blossomed beneath the quick. Step, step, step, step. She crouched down next to him, humming tunelessly under her breath. The gray film around the perimeter of his vision turned black, and he heard a horrible throbbing roar in his ears. With surprising strength, the slip of a girl flipped him onto his back; the resulting impact forced the remaining air out of his lungs. The last thing he saw, as she settled herself astride his hips, was her empty, bone-white smile.


	4. Lies the Shadow

Nocturne: Lies the Shadow

_The eyes are not here_

_There are no eyes here_

_In this valley of dying stars_

_In this hollow valley _

TS Eliot

"Have a seat, Severus," said Dumbledore, his mouth turned up in that ever-present, damnably genuine smile. Snape considered the chair opposite the Headmaster's desk -- today it was an overstuffed puce cushion shaped like a cupped hand -- and decided to remain standing.

"What do you think?" Dumbledore asked, motioning to the monstrous piece of furniture. "I'm not sure it fits, and I can't get anyone to sit in to tell me if it's comfortable or not." He cocked his head to the side and observed the chair, then shook his head with a soft, dejected sigh. With a wave of his wand, the frightening thing was replaced by a harmless-looking, austere wingbacked chair. Snape sat down.

"Very good," said Dumbledore. "Now. We won't talk about that thing we aren't talking about," he continued with a tilt of his head. Snape's eyes performed the customary flick towards the Headmaster's hand.

"Yes," said Dumbledore. "That. Shall I say thank you again?"

"I'm not sure what you'd be thanking me for," said Snape. This was not the first non-conversation they'd had in the recent past.

"Oh, a great number of things, I would expect," said the old wizard. "Have you been to the Malfoy estate recently?"

"Haven't had much time," said Snape, recognizing the carefully constructed, well-hidden request. He had become rather adept at reading past the mischievous sparkle (dimmed somehow these days, but what could you expect) in the Headmaster's eyes. They never spoke freely in the office -- too many ears, and not all of them living or human.

"Mm," said Dumbledore. "Well, next time you're there, why don't you explore a bit?" Snape blew out a tiny breath that was meant to suffice as a laugh.

"I'm not sure that opportunity will present itself any time soon," Snape said, understanding that, as usual, Dumbledore was trying to tell him something without actually telling him. It was infuriating, really, at least from Snape's perspective. Probably from anyone's perspective.

"You never know," said Dumbledore. "Narcissa might invite you over for tea."

"Of course. I've got class," Snape said, lifting himself out of the chair.

"Yes, yes, go on," said Dumbledore. He smiled again over the rims of his spectacles, and Snape saw, from the corner of his eye as he turned to leave, a swiftly waving wand and a poof!, followed by the re-appearance of a repulsive, hand-shaped chair.

- - -

His first thought, upon waking, was to curse himself for falling asleep. He had to teach those damnable first years in -- he sat up and turned his head in the direction of where the grandfather clock was supposed to be.

Except it wasn't there. Not missing, no, because he was very certain that he had never, in his long life, decorated the walls of his bedroom with unicorn tapestries. Nor did his bed feel like a slab of cold, damp, mossy stone. Nor did he wake up feeling as though someone had only just recently strangled him to death.

Oh, no. Was he dead? Blast. But why...what would make him be dead? He was very much not-dead only a few minutes ago, when he lay down for just a moment in between classes...

It all came together in an instant, with the shattering speed of a train slamming into a brick wall.

The tower.

The potion.

The vault.

The girl.

The girl.

Snape launched himself to a stand and immediately regretted it; he was rewarded with a dizzying bout of nausea for his trouble. He stuck one hand out and stumbled foward until he felt stone beneath his palm, then closed his eyes again to wait for the vertigo to pass. A deep, steadying breath helped, cleared his vision of any remaining pesky black dots that were threatening to coalesce into a dark roaring nothingness again.

He forced his mind to focus on one thought -- the girl. What had happened? Everything got gray and foggy after she had woken up. He went very, very still, trained his mind on the memory. She woke up, she panicked, he calmed her down, she started chanting that twisted nursery rhyme...and then, like some bizzare, atmospheric Dementor, she sucked every breath of air from the room. He winced, remembering the horrible burning in his lungs, the pressure of suffocation bearing down upon him, the fading world, punctuated by one clear last vision -- her pallid face, blue irises agleam through the odd white film over her eyes, her mouth open wide, grinning with all the unbridled joy of a child opening a Christmas present.

He was not, now, entirely convinced that she was even human. There were tales scattered throughout the wizarding world, tales of the Beansidhe, the Peerie, the Tuatha de Dannan -- old myths, ancient tales gone the way of the druid and the drow. Fairies, for instance, were now no more than decorations for wizard parties. He thought back to his mother, oddly, of the stories she used to tell him when he was very, very small -- but the memory was old, thin, as if viewed through a curtain or a permanent veil of fog.

And anyway, he thought of the girl's face -- a near-perfect replica of Narcissa's, though much thinner, and with the added dubious benefit of dark half-moons shadowing the brilliant eyes. She was clearly their child -- but how had she come to this? What had made them, all those years ago, take a child, barely old enough to understand the concept of her power, and shut her up forever?

No. That was not the most immediate problem. The immediate problem was that she was gone. He observed the empty room grimly, wondering how long he had been unconscious, how far she could have gotten. Could she have escaped from the manor, could she now be sprinting across the grounds? There was one small thing that gave Snape some sense of security -- the Locarium. He imagined that it would be set near the front of the gates, if she passed through unaware, not knowing the things one must do to thwart the spell, then someone in the Ministry would surely be alerted to her presence.

Not that Snape took any comfort from that knowledge -- the Ministry, as designed by the Dark Lord, was all primed and set to fold in upon itself any day now, and rise again with the dawn of a darker morning. Besides, he thought as he took his first few uncertain steps towards the door, which seemed farther away than he had originally assumed, she didn't even have a wand. Only registered wand users were detectable by the seeing-spell.

This realization imbued him with a new sense of urgency, so he ignored the still-lingering ache poking around his skull and pressed onward. The door to the vault was wide open; for half a moment Snape hoped she would not have had the foresight to figure out the trick to besting the never-ending staircase. Unfortunately, he discovered as he waded into the unleavened darkness, there was no such trick apparent if one was going up the stairs. One, two, three, and he felt the solid door as his knees banged unpleasantly against it.

It was slightly ajar; the nudge from Snape pushed it entirely open. He scuffled out into the hall, wincing at the comparative brightness of the single torch in its rusted brass sconce. The light of the very real, ordinary fire was momentarily comforting. That was until he felt his foot hit something soft and solid, and he looked down to see two very dead house elves sprawled out at his feet.

Snape had no real use for elves, but he didn't want them dead. He didn't want to touch them, either, so he left them there, bulbous eyes glaring up at the blameless ceiling. It did make him wonder, though, why she had spared him. Maybe it wasn't that she'd spared him. Maybe she'd gotten distracted by the prospect of freedom and flitted off before the job was finished.

This time, Snape had no problem finding his way up the stairs to the more civilized part of the house. A wary thought teased the corner of his mind, but he dismissed it quickly. Not possible. He expected, upon entering one of the main hallways from which most of the rest of the house was accesible, to see a trail of dead house elves scattered like butchered chattel across the gleaming marble floor. He saw nothing, no crumbling ceilings to indicate an explosion, no fires to suggest a struggle, no more corpses to make him think she was on some kind of slaughtering spree. The house was quiet.

His first task was probably a latent strike, but on the off chance that she was still somewhere in the manor, he performed a quick sealing charm on every exterior-leading door in the house. Not a small feat, considering that he hadn't the time to go to each individual portal and give it the proper magical attention it deserved. He hoped, if nothing else, being thwarted might anger her enough that she would make some kind of racket, enabling him to find her again.

On that note, he treated himself to a Disillusionment Charm, thanking whatever God might be listening that she hadn't been smart enough to steal his wand. And his last measure -- just after the Silencio he murmured to his boots -- was a Supersensory Charm. At once, as was the way of this spell, he became hyper-aware of every minute sound and breath of movement within his vicinity -- just there, flitting through the tall vaulted beams of the ceiling, was a bluebottle with a slightly bent wing. He paused and got very still again -- did not even breathe -- until he could sense the presence of warm, living beings in the manor.

Most of them were house elves -- he could tell by the weaker glow they set off in his mind. They moved both slowly and in intermittent bursts, unaware, obviously, of the terror that had been unleashed among them. He pushed them aside and concentrated, eyes at half-mast, trying to reach out for any sign that something more sentient was present in the manor.

At first, nothing. Then a thin, far-away cry, desolate, desperate –

Mother...mother...

The reedy whisper was attached to a figure, suddenly quite brilliant in his mind's eye. Upstairs.

He took off running, the last vestiges of his weakness falling away like scales. He let the vision, rather than his own sense of direction, lead him in flight. A spiral staircase, a winding hall, hundreds of doors, his own shadow growing and dying, growing and dying, as he passed the flickering torches along the walls. His feet made no noise to mark their passage, and he knew that his Disillusionment charm was strong enough to hide him from any casual onlooker, so long as that onlooker did not look too closely at the faint rippling of the air, like heat shimmering off the pavement at midsummer.

So as he approached the bedroom, he was glad for the open door. It would have been the only thing to indicate his presence.

Ariadne was curled up in the center of the bed – Narcissa's, Snape realized with a start – sobbing wildly. He had not expected this. He had been thinking, this whole time, that he had unleashed an unbridled, calculating evil, the kind that wanted to destroy more than it wanted to live. Here he saw his error – hers was not an evil that could be controlled – far more dangerous, infinitely more terrifying.

"Mother…" She said again. "Where are you, where are you…"

Were Snape a softer man, he might have taken pity on the pitiful creature. Instead he drew his wand out of his pocket.

"Petrificus Totalis," He muttered. Ariadne went rigid, and Snape felt a swift current of electricity run through his body, but it was soon gone as the girl laid out, immobile, on the silk-draped bed.

Only her eyes moved as he approached her, still invisible. They darted back and forth, back and forth, still wet with tears that slid from the corners and dripped down her cheeks. Only now, she didn't look so sad any more. She looked angry. Snape saw, with growing horror, the misty white glaze beginning to form in her gaze – it seemed to emanate from her pupils, creeping out of the black like tendrils of ivy, seeking purchase over the rest of her eyes. At once, with a jolt, Snape recognized that she was looking at him.

"No, no, little girl," he seethed. He clamored onto the bed, charm abandoned (he felt the trickling warmth as it unraveled) and placed his hands on either of her shoulders.

"You will not," He said, "Try to kill me again."

A flash of recognition across her face, followed at once by a darker flash of hatred. Incredibly, he felt her straining against the body-bind charm.

"No," he said again. "Ariadne. Ariadne. Stop." He felt his throat beginning to close, felt the air in the room grow incredibly still.

"Ariadne," he wheezed. "Stop."

She strained against him again, her lips peeled back over clenched teeth. The whiteness in her eyes faded a bit. Snape felt himself taking a less obstructed breath.

"Ariadne," he said.

"Where are they?" she hissed, no longer a plaintive, lonely little girl.

"I will help you find them," he lied, struggling with all of his strength, all of his internal power, to keep her pinned to the bed. He knew, with a grim certainty, that it was only the threads of the body-bind and his own might that kept her from performing the same inhuman feat of strength that had allowed her to defeat him before. He did not want to stupefy her again, remembering how well it had turned out the last time. There was – there had to be – enough of the child left in her to listen to reason.

"The princess was lovely," said Ariadne. Snape nodded briskly, hoping…

The child emerged, for a moment, and she let out a dry sob. Her eyes cleared, and she softened beneath his hands.

Snape took a deep, unhindered, grateful breath.

"Now," he said, working to keep the relieved tremble out of his voice. "We can talk."


	5. A Crowd of Twisted Things

**A/N:** Is everone having fun? I certainly hope so. Just a reminder -- AU = Alternate Universe, meaning that certain events in the following fan fiction may not directly coincide with those written by J.K. Rowling. This story will remain canon up to the death of Albus Dumbledore, the imprisonment of Lucius Malfoy, and the imminent rise of the Dark Lord.

Think of it, if you will, as a microcosm amidst a larger world -- an exploration of things that might have been.

3's to my Ella-Bella, for her brilliant brain.

Merry Christmas to all!

Nocturne: A Crowd of Twisted Things

_She wishes that her body wore_

_a carapace; not skin_

_(yes she shies away from open arms_

_but her secret, smiling mouth could charm_

_the devil and his kin)_

R.E.R.

- - -

Her first memory --

Not a memory. Memory implies conscious recollection, an understanding of time, a separation of one's former self from the self that presently exists. So she could not call it memory, for it was a thing that hovered in her mind as though it happened -- _was _happening, all the time. It was the reason she could not focus. It was for this...presence of thought...that she recited the nursery rhymes, the little poems, the endless cyclical repetition of words, words, words to temper the image always lying just at the edge of her consciousness. It waited like a patient friend, on good days, like a jilted angry lover on bad ones.

And even on the good days, allowing it full access to her mind caused great vaucous gaps between one conscious breath and the next, which always came in a confusing rush, coupled with the overwhelming feeling that she had done something wrong.

If she had known better, or had the opportunity to share this thing with anyone -- they would have told her that it was a dream, not a representation of something that actually happened.

For one thing, nobody remembered anything before their second or third year of life. But the way she described it, many years later when she had the proper words to do so, made it clear that this thing happened when she was very small, far too small to remember it properly, or at all.

It was this:

Moonlight, and cold -- cold on her face, her toes, legs, hands, arms, belly, creeping across her skin with a soft, inquisitive touch. Late fall, perhaps, early winter, cold enough so that when she stopped looking at the moon and looked up at the woman who held her, clouds of white smoke drifted out of her parted lips. They were moving quickly, she sensed it by the jarring motion, by the way the moon bounced around in the sky. It was the only thing, besides the warm woman, that she could really focus on.

Mother. The warm woman was mother; that she knew beyond any doubt or question. She reached up a hand -- so tiny! and tried to close the gap between her own cold skin and mother's. But her arms were not long enough, and her hands were not yet inclined to behave as she told them.

"Almost there," said mother. For some reason, mother was crying; for some reason, Ariadne knew that they were not supposed to be here. Here, where? A forest, thin with the ravages of the season, with skelletal boughs scraping the clear night sky. The naked clustering trees shattered the light of the moon and the stars.

Oh, the cold! It made her angry, to be this cold, when she had been...warm before, not hungry before, protected and safe and only concerned with the beauty of mother, and the smell of home.

She was then lying on something rough and hard and uneven. Mother's arms were gone, she was colder than ever. She started to cry.

Another face leaned over her. It was not mother's. This face was ragged and shadowed, haggard in the broken silver glow filtering through the trees. A foul smell greeted her as the woman leaned down and breathed.

"Ohhh," said the woman. She had a necklace made of teeth; it slid out from beneath her spattered fur collar and hovered just a hair above Ariadne's nose. "She is dying."

"I know," came mother's voice from too far away. "The healers say...within the year. They cannot save her."

"What happened?" The old woman asked.

"When I carried her..." Mother trailed off. "I was...hurt."

"Oh, that pompous little dark one," said the woman. "Thinks himself so clever. Hurt you, did he? Cursed you, even though you carried a child, pure of blood and spirit?"

"Yes," said Mother. "They say she is too weak to survive."

Ariadne shifted -- the thing she was lying on bit into her skin, her skull grated painfully as she tried, with limited success, to see where mother had gone. Her body shook with the cold and with her rising sobs; the ugly woman above her blurred.

"I can take it from her," said the woman. "It will cost you."

"I don't care," said mother. "They say that only those who need you can find you. Only those who aren't meant to die can..."

"Yes, I know the tales," said the old woman. She put a single wrinkled finger on Ariadne's forehead. "But at what price? What do you get for cheating death?"

"I don't care, do you hear me? I don't care!" Mother sobbed; Ariadne heard a frantic rustling in the distance, and saw the scuffle as the old woman lunged forward. Ariadne heard the stumbling steps, and mother was still.

"You must care," said the woman. "It is a life for a life. Always. Death is greedy, but he is fair. He can be convinced to trade." The woman grinned; she had no teeth. Perhaps she wore them all around her neck.

"Fine. Any life but hers."

"Be careful," said the woman. Her voice was serious now. "You do not know what the future holds, not for you, not for her. You do not know who you might be promising to the darkness."

"_Any life but hers!" _Mother screamed. Her voice bounced around the clearing and echoed out across the forest.

"Very well," said the woman. "You needn't shout. It's unbecoming. I will do what you ask, and you agree to pay the price." She held out her hand and they shook over Ariadne's head.

"Yes, I agree," said mother.

After that, everything is dark, until the light.

- - - -

Initially Severus had not wanted to even _consider _attempting Leglimency on a mind as unstable as hers. It would be a fool's errand, an exercise in idiocy -- and really, just plain self-righteous. Leglimency on the seriously mad was not recommended, not even for someone as adept as he was.

He was not yet convinced, though, that she was seriously mad.

They faced each other in Narcissa's austere, well-appointed bedroom. It hadn't had the time to get too stuffy yet -- in fact, if he were not mistaken, he thought he still detected the impalpable scent of anise and starflower; Narcissa's perfume. He wondered, briefly, if Ariadne recognized the smell. And he wondered, briefly, what he had done to deserve this kind of backward, inexorable punishment. He had done so well, after all -- serving his masters, trotting along behind the angel and the demon with his head bowed and his ears open, barely questioning the orders he had been given. Well, that was not entirely true -- he had questioned the hell out of Dumbledore.

"So," he said. "You've got an interesting...gift."

Ariadne's head snapped up; she had been staring at the comforter. She wasn't going to try and kill him again, but that did not mean she had to behave. Her wrists, for instance, were still charm-bound behind her back. Mostly because the moment he had released her, she had tried to scratch his eyes out. At that memory, Snape entertained the fleeting fantasy of snapping her fingers off. It came unbidden, and he pushed it away with a shake of his head.

"Why did they put you down there?" he asked. He had a pretty fair idea why.

No answer.

"Ariadne, why did your mother put you in the room?"

That worked a little too well. Her features tightened, her shoulders strained with the effort of trying to break the binding. It was like watching a trapped, starved animal, and knowing that if it ever managed to escape, the revenge would be epic.

"Don't start that," he warned. "I'm not above putting you right back where I found you."

Actually, he was. But she didn't need to know that. The threat was enough to subdue her momentarily; at least she stopped struggling, though her chest still heaved and her eyes still darted back and forth like nervous fish in a shallow pool. She took a deep, ragged breath, but still did not speak.

So he waited, and this was when the idea of Leglimency crept back in. She was not seriously mad, was she? Just...

Who was he trying to fool? He had absolutely no idea what she was. Again, he was drawn back to the scattered knowledge he held on the subject of fairy tales. There was something obnoxiously poetic about a beautiful, angry girl locked in a tower for a sin she could not atone. Except she wasn't beautiful, she was not so much angry as she was violent without remorse, it was a cellar-vault, not a tower, and as for her sins...

"I hurt Draco," she said very, very softly. Only now, when she was not shouting and he was not rigid with shock, did he recognize the hoarse rasp of disuse limning her childlike tone.

"Did you?" Snape asked, his mouth twisting. "How?"

"I dunno," she said, and scowled; a softer version of her former feral anger.

Brilliant. Mind of a child. Snape shifted in his seat and suppressed (not for the last time) an irritated sigh. Though he was no great advocate of fate, he was beginning to see its implications everywhere. It was like a tapestry viewed from underneath the loom; from that vantage, the tangled mess of threads mean nothing. But turn the thing over, hold it up, look at it from a distance, and the larger picture becomes apparent. Snape imagined that when this (what?) was all over, he would see the picture clearly, and understand the order of things. Right now all he saw was a tangled mess.

Twilight crawled in through the windows, dragging a dusky cape. Shadows settled into the room. Snape thought about sending a few sparks to light the lamps along the wall; then he thought about how she might react to even that small display of magic. He decided to let the darkness do its work.

But as soon as the last finger of sunlight disappeared over the distant hills, there was a faint crackling noise, and at once a great fire burst into life. Charmed, he thought, wincing in preparation for her reaction.

She half-screamed, half-gasped, and in an impressive feat of strength or magic or both, freed her arms from his body-bind. Snape sprang to his feet as she scrambled over to the corner, eyes wide enough to catch the orange-yellow glow of the flames in the fireplace. She panted, heaved; trembled, Snape thought he saw the mist in her gaze...but suddenly a flash of recognition flickered across her terrified features. She took a trembling breath, let it out slowly, and he could practically see the tension dissolving from her muscles. Her eyes were clear.

"It's only fire," he said.

"I know," she snapped back. She cleared a matted string of white-gold hair from her forehead and frowned fiercely.

"Funny, most people might react a little differently to something they're so familiar with," he drawled.

If she noted his sarcasm, she did not show it. Slowly, as though she were expecting to be caught out at some kind of mischief, she peeled herself away from the wall. She cut her eyes over at him as she made her way closer to the fire, watching him carefully for sudden movements. He remained perfectly still, hands in plain sight, watching her with his own impassive black gaze.

She stood in front of the hearth, and for one brief moment he saw an expression of bliss move across her face. She held her palms out to the warmth, and her shoulders dropped. She sighed. Once again, Snape was taken by how thin she was. The light of the fire threw the outline of her body into stark relief. He could see the angular shape of her hips, the impossibly narrow line of her ribcage, the sizable gap between her thighs. It turned his stomach, and he had to look away.

The state of her malnutrition reminded him, at once, and rather inappropriately, that he was hungry.

"Ariadne," he said, "Would you like something to eat?"

She turned away from the fire and regarded him evenly.

"Yes," she replied. Her eyes dropped away from his, and she lowered herself down onto the rug, her back to the flames. She drew her knees up to her chest and rested her sharp little chin on her folded hands.

But the mention of food had kicked up a worrisome thought in his mind. Where were the house elves? Normally he would have been more than glad to be rid of their overhelpful presence, but their absence was troubling. At least one should have appeared by now, politely and nervously reminding him that this was, in fact, Lady Malfoy's room, and would Master Snape please, sir, let Whoever escort him back to his rooms?

"Do not move," he warned her. "I'll be right back."

She did not seem to hear him, but her stillness, for the moment, looked trustworthy. She was enjoying the fire, and though her parted lips were slowly mouthing silent words he could not hear, her staring eyes looked normal, so he decided it was safe to leave her be. He moved to the door and stuck his head out into the hallway. It was empty. The Manor, which always seemed to hum with the presence of the wards and the elves, was eerily silent.

He immediately tensed, and without thinking he withdrew his wand from his pocket. He shut the door behind him and moved fully into the hall, keenly aware of the barely audible scuffling of his feet against the marble floor.

In the breath of space between his deciscion to cast another sensoring spell and the lungful of air he drew to speak it, fifteen people rounded the corner and came charging down the hall.

"Stop there!" Said the leader. They were too far away to discern faces or forms, but Snape recognized the purple Auror robes, and knew he was in for it. In three steps he was back inside the bedroom, his violent entrance punctuate by her muffled gasp. He hissed a permanent sticking charm at the door, knowing that it would only hold a group of Ministry Aurors for a few brief moments.

"Get up," he said tersely. Her eyes were wide, and she remained still, frozen in her child-like pose.

"I said get _up, _you stupid little girl!" He snarled, head whipping back involuntarily towards the door as the drumbeat of footsteps thundered closer. He was done with curbing his words for fear of having the life sucked out of him -- if they didn't get out of here immediately, he would be in Azkaban in a blink and there would probably be a pile of dead Aurors left in the hallway for Narcissa to find when she returned from babysitting Bellatrix.

And though Snape did not want to believe that the fate of the world rested on his own shoulders, he was sure that none of this was a part of the plan. He felt a brief, surprising, red-hot flash of resentment.

There was no time for that. He shook the eyes -- sharp blue _and emerald _green -- out of his mind. There was no time for _any _of this, even though each thought took place in less than the time it took to exhale.

"Severus Snape!" Came a voice from the other side of the door. "You have ten seconds to surrender yourself!"

Snape snapped his attention back to the girl. She was staring at the door, terror apparent on her face. Snape knew he had about half a second before he lost her to her own mind, and he did not have time to coddle and coax her out of madness again. So he reached down and seized her by the arm and yanked her up, and in that same moment the doors blasted open with a deafening crash, splintered wood and brass-knob missiles exploding into the room.

The last thing the Aurors saw was Severus Snape Disapparating with a scrawny, struggling girl in tow.

- - -

MURDEROUS PROFESSOR TAKES HOSTAGE, quoth the Daily Prophet.

- - -

She fought him -- that was why they did not appear where he meant them too. The moment his hand closed around her upper arm she tried to wrestle out of his grip; it was all he could do to hold on to her while the world compressed and twisted in upon itself. It was a small miracle, he realized as they stumbled gracelessly onto the grass, that neither of them had been Splinched in the process. They were in the center of a wide, moonlit plain. Far to the left, a road split the silver grass; beyond that grew tangled, low bracken, and beyond that a forest proper, looming black in the distance. He had no idea where they were.

She wrenched herself free and scrambled away from him, her hand wrapped around her bruised upper arm. She was muttering wildly to herself, lips moving, mouthing the secret words. Even in the unsatisfactory light of the moon, Snape could see the whiteness crawling over her eyes. He tensed and took a few steps towards her.

"Stop it!" He shouted, expecting at any moment to feel the uncomfortable pressure of suffocation.

But it did not come. She continued to chant, and her eyes were like pale dead things in the gloom, but Snape could still breathe. Of course, he thought, relief flooding his muscles. She couldn't very well suck all the air out of the world.

"It's not working," He said, slick and smug. "Behave yourself, brat."

But she did not stop. She did, however, hold a hand out to him, and the expression on her face was one of pain, misery, a plea for help, not the vacant staring business of before. In spite of himself, Snape moved forward, intending to shake the shadows out of her. It seemed to work before. Perhaps her madness only needed an interruption, and then it could be tamed.

His hands settled on her shoulders --

and felt an intense, excruciating, horrible jolt of energy as soon as his hands fell upon her. Her skin beneath the thin gown was as hot as a cauldron held too long over a fire. He shot back, propelled as much by the pain as the strange force of magic that emanated from somewhere inside her. He landed on his knees some ten feet from her, facing the forest, his hands trembling and throbbing as though he had gripped two pillars of molten iron.

"You little _fiend," _He hissed, again filled with the thought of _what in the name of Merlin is this hell-sent creature._

Because she was barefoot, because he was still spinning from shock and pain, he did not hear her approaching until he felt the slight stirring of the finer hairs on the back of his neck. She was singing, very softly, under her breath. It was too late to move -- he felt her fingers, tongues of fire, tracing over his forehead. He howled -- _not _very dignified, and he had the presence of mind to be glad there was no one about -- and pitched forward on his hands. She _laughed. _The sound got caught up in the warm breeze and was carried away, presumably to give some poor child a nightmare in another distant part of the world.

Shaking, he fought past the pain -- she was tracing her fingers over his back now, as gently as a lover -- and he felt it even through his robes, like the lashes of a lovingly applied cat of nine tails. He thought he smelled the acrid stench of smoldering fabric, and still he managed to force his trembling hand into his pocket, still he managed to turn, observing her horrible grin, and scream

"Stupefy!" _Bitch, _He wanted to add, but the sight of her crumbling to the ground behind him was enough, for now.

He picked himself up, wincing as the usually soft fabric of his robes brushed against his wounded skin like sandpaper. For a brief, tempting moment, he entertained the fantasy of reviving her, watching her sadistic evil little eyes blazing with the glorious pain of an expertly weilded Crucio...

No. No, no. He took a step back, gripping his wand tightly enough to blanch his knuckles. The flesh of his palm protested the force of contact, but he was more concerned with convincing himself that retribution would be in poor taste, and probably more damaging in the long run. He needed to know what she knew. He needed to know why...if she remembered. So, swallowing the last of his ire (it tasted like blood sliding down the back of his throat; he had to shake his head to clear his vision of it) he knelt down beside her, and held out his wand, and helped himself to her only memory.


	6. This Charm is Wasted

A/N Anyone still with me? I know it's been a while...stupid life!

Tried to be *somewhat* geographically accurate here, though the town itself is a product of my brain, the surrounding areas are not. I've never been to England, so I'm trusting Google earth and various websites.

Nocturne: This Charm Is Wasted

_Tell them, dear, if eyes were made for seeing_

_Then beauty is its own excuse for being._

Ralph Waldo Emerson

_ _ _

He was used to having to wade through years of memories, through innumerable events both significant and inane. Normally they ran together like a freshly painted canvas left to melt in the rain. It was up to his singular talent to find the one he was looking for, to find the one relevant memory buried beneath years of life, to sift through the caverns of experience with a single pale light to pierce the rushing darkness.

It was not so with Ariadne Malfoy. There were a few bright flares that rose out of the otherwise empty gray space of her mind, but these were not so much memories as they were primal feelings; fear, hunger, anger, desire, and the occasional startling flash of magic, followed by deep, deep sorrow. Her only clear, discernible memory stood out at the center of her psyche, and it was abnormally clear, not blurred with spaces of forgetting. It was as if it had been burned there, branded with sharp, precise strokes by a heavy, cruel hand.

He saw Narcissa, he saw her galloping through an unknown wood. He saw the old woman and felt that strange thorn of _something _trying to make itself known. It was like having a word in his mouth, but his tongue refused to remember how to shape it. Something from a book, something he had read, something he had heard...

He pulled himself away from his own musing and concentrated on Ariadne's past. So, for some transgression known only to the Dark Lord and possibly Lucius Malfoy, Narcissa had been tortured while she carried her daughter. Cursed, so said the old woman. The old..._blast, _he couldn't think of it now.

Narcissa had been warned, and thoroughly at that. There were, of course, no working studies on what harm curses could cause to an unborn child. Ariadne had been doomed from the start, poisoned by evil before she even had a chance to draw her first breath.

Narcissa -- damn the sentiment of mothers -- had refused to let her daughter die. She had called on some old and implacable magic, something that could stay the very hand of death. For a price. A price that the Malfoys had nearly paid for in the life of their son, if not for Snape's own intervention. With that thought, he drew himself swiftly out of her memory and sat back, letting her limp body fall to the ground again.

So. Now _he_ was indebted to death. He had stolen the priceless prize, and he had unleashed the fruits of Narcissa's sacrifice. Death wanted a Malfoy, or someone in a Malfoy's place. The old woman had given Ariadne life; she had healed the wasted body, breathed into the shriveled lungs, and somehow secured a soul that was meant to pass on to the unknown after. Ariadne was, for lack of a better image, loosely tethered inside her own body.

And she was damaged. The Hag might have healed her body, as Narcissa had asked, but not her soul. Not her spirit. Not the very human part of her that had experienced pain and suffering before she even had the voice to protest. She was absolutely better off dead. She was _supposed _to be dead. Her life was forfeit, and her very survival endangered the balance that Snape himself was, for some ridiculous reason, now charged with managing.

If nothing else, her path was clear now. She had to die. There was too much at stake, there were too many lives at risk. Her continued existense meant nothing to the world; she had been forgotten long ago. Perhaps this had been the secret hidden under Dumbledore's many layers of insinuation. Perhaps he had intended for Snape to kill this girl a long time ago, and wasn't merely trying to hint at more spying on the Malfoys.

But that wasn't like Dumbledore, was it? He'd have wanted to save the girl, like he wanted to save everyone else. He still believed, even though Snape could provide him with scores of evidence to the contrary, that all wizards and witches were innately good at their core. And he must have known she lived -- as a child with magic, her name would have appeared in Hogwarts' great book, and would not have disappeared when she "died". So why let her fester for all those years? Why allow her madness to grow and mutate and turn into something uncontrollable?

He might not ever know the answer to these questions. All he knew now was that she posed a very real threat to the wizarding world, and that he had neither the inclination nor the resources to provide her with a living tomb.

With a resigned sigh, Snape gripped his wand and pointed it at the girl. She was beginning to stir. He was struck with an immediate sense of deja vu, remembering their first meeting in the vaults. If only he'd left it alone. Blasted Malfoys and their stupid, romantic secrets. A hidden daughter -- _honestly. _

She had no quality of life, not really. She might as well be put out of her misery.

But Dumbledore...he had wanted Snape to find her. And he had let her live all these years...

The foolish idealism of an old man bereft of any real concept of human nature. No intent. Only hope.

Hope for what?

His hand stayed true, wand-tip pointed at her heart. His resolve was of steel. Dumbledore was a fool who'd gotten himself cursed and then killed. A well meaning fool, but a fool all the same. Her life was of no consequence.

"Avada Kedav-"

Her eyes opened, and he dropped his wand.

- - -

The cottage by the sea was very old and it smelled like many families of mice and many years of slowly decaying wood. And cottage -- well, perhaps that was too grand of a word. There was a tiny sitting room, made smaller by the sagging bookshelves lining three of its four soot-colored walls. A threadbare sofa and two tired-looking chairs were huddled together around the cold hearth like beggars. To the left was the door to the bedroom, with a narrow brass bed shoved up under the seaward window and a large armoire taking up the rest of the space in the room. A small door led to the bathroom: a rusty claw-foot tub and leaning sink on a porcelain pedestal. The toilet was the newest appliance in the room, and it shared a hesitant length of pipe with the tub and the sink. Sometimes the water came as requested, and sometimes the taps coughed pneumatic dust and groaned before spitting out brown muck.

The kitchen was just as rustic, and the absence of an icebox either suggested that the house had been abandoned for so long that the inhabitants had never brought one in -- or that the inhabitants didn't need electric boxes to keep their milk and produce fresh. That perhaps they who owned the cottage had kept to themselves for a reason, and not one that the busy neighbors in their gingerbread summer-homes whispered about over white picket fences. There wasn't much else to do in Brindlemoor-by-the-sea. Lowestoft was too far away and Hopton was just as dull.

But nobody had been in the house for years, that was for sure. What was it, ten? Fifteen? Twenty? Eleanor Wall peered out of her curtains at the bulky black shape moving through the front gates. It was too dark too be sure if there was really anyone there. After all, her eyes were failing, as any one of her children would gladly tell her when she claimed to see mermaids or gnomes or little boys flying around on tiny brooms.

- - -

Ariadne resisted Apparition again, but Snape was expecting it this time and was able, with great effort, to stay their course. As soon as they Apparated he clapped his hand over her mouth and shoved her spindly frame under one arm, carting her across the scraggly front yard like a sack of flour. He hoped that the ancient silencing charms were still present.

He managed to restrain his struggling cargo long enough to cross the threshold into the musty-smelling house. He set her down and turned to swiftly push the creaking deadbolt into place, just as she picked herself up off the floor and launched at the door, screeching.

"Ariadne, stop it," He said, watching her claw with door with useless, brittle nails, bang at the warped boards with tightly clenched skeleton fists. She had not yet regained the presence of mind to unleash her deadly arsenal of magic; it seemed she required a certain measure of concentration to call it forth, and her current state of anger made that impossible.

"I " -Slam! - "Want" -Slam!- "OUT!" Bang, bang, bangbangbang went the heels of her feet on the door, drumming the wood hard enough to rattle it in its frame.

He wasn't keen on stupefying her again. She was addled enough, and he was well aware that too many applications of the spell over a short period of time could have very negative side effects. And he hadn't a cauldron, no Dreamless Sleep draught, not even a pinch of belladonna to slow her thundering madness.

He was going to have to talk to her.

"I WANT OUT! LET ME OUT! I WANT..."

Suddenly she stopped, and shook her head as though confused; for a brief moment she looked back at him, her eyes narrowed.

"I want out!...I want..."

A pause, her hands plastered to the door, her head thrown back.

"I want..." her voice was uncertain. She delivered a few half-hearted blows and drew a ragged breath.

"I want...I want Mother," she said, the last word no more than a whisper. She sank back on her haunches and looked at her blistered, bleeding hands. She unfurled her fingers one by one, and her open palms trembled.

"I want Mother," she whispered again. A lesser man would have been rent in half by the pitiful voice. A lesser man would have felt his own heart yearning towards the child -- despite knowledge of her age, it was hard to think of her as anything else -- and that man would have known what to say to soothe the troubled eyes and stay the shaking hands.

Snape felt nothing but relief -- quiet sorrow he could manage, even if the sound of her incipient sniffling did make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He was not a lesser man, tethered to the world by the quivering, transient needs of others. Just because he had decided not to kill her didn't mean he had to like her.

"Now that you've worn yourself out," Snape said, "Perhaps you could find it in yourself to sit quietly while I figure out how to extricate us from the trouble you've caused."

For the first time she looked about, taking in the dingy walls and warped, uneven floor. Snape ignored the tears pooling in her eyes (pewter-blue in the darkness, neither Narcissa's nor Lucius', but decidedly her own) and motioned towards the chair. He permitted himself a moment to wonder why she was not trying to kill him, now that she was quiet enough to realize he was still here. Rather than push his luck, he merely stood back as she picked herself unsteadily off the floor. She watched him from the corner of her eye as she, clinging to the wall, made her way over to the sagging sofa. She sat down, inviting an instant puff of brown dust to rise off the cushion.

" 'Choo," she said, her sneeze absurdly polite. Without thinking, Snape handed her the black handkerchief from his waistcoat. She took it, frowning, staring at the limp leaf of fabric as though it might instruct her of its use. She brought it to her nose and sniffed. It was a simple, surprisingly intimate gesture. Snape turned away and busied himself with muttering a few quick charms to dispel the dust and ward off any four-legged occupants that might have taken up residence over the years. When he turned back, she was staring at him, eyes bright with recognition.

"Mister Snape," she said.

Snape blinked twice, his wand poised in mid-flick. The windows stopped cleaning themselves.

"Yes," he said.

"Severus Snape," she intoned, in her husky, out-of-practice soprano.

"That is my name," he replied.

"I remember you," she said, waving the handkerchief. "This smell. I remember you. You came to Father's parties." She paused, squinting hard.

"I stole your cloak."

"My..."

She _had _stolen his cloak. He remembered the end of an inebriated evening with Malfoy, having told himself he would only have _one, _to keep up appearances. One had naturally turned into five, with Malfoy two ahead of him, singing at the top of his lungs while he banged out a rhythm on the chess set. When it had come time to leave, he had discovered that his cloak had gone missing.

Narcissa sent it by owl three days later, with a briskly apologetic note about the irreparable tear in the green silk lining. For some reason, damage done by Ariadne proved impervious to the normal spells that every mother _must _know to keep her household intact.

He still wore that cloak, as it was a fine one, and the tear was near the bottom, barely noticeable. He was wearing it now.

"You did," he replied. He tugged the fabric out and showed her the still-visible damage. She tilted her chin at him, daring him to request an apology.

So the memories _were _there. Fascinating, as a talented Leglimens should have been able to gain access to even the most deeply repressed parts of the psyche. If it was there, he should have been able to find it. Then again, a mind left idle and without stimulation would certainly calcify over the years; it would harden and slow, and build chambers upon chambers of dark secret places to hide what few precious moments of experience it could recall. They would be locked away for safe-keeping, like bright gems wrapped in velvet, tied up with silk, placed first in a box and then a chest, and then hidden in the top corner of a closest, disguised by the winter coats. Only the one who had hidden them would know what they were and how to find them.

He did not expect that unlocking this single flash of memory would let loose a flood of repression. But it was a start.

- - -

He lit a fire, and she curled up, cat-like, on the sofa while he finished tidying up the house. The repetitive drone of the cleaning and re-arranging spells kept his mind occupied; for a while, anyway. He paused at the island in the middle of the small kitchen, running a long pale hand over the worn wood.

How many years had it been? Thirty? And how many since it stood empty? He recalled their last visit to the seaside cottage -- his father never came along, as the ocean air made him wheeze, and he disliked the friendly, inquisitive neighbors.

Eileen Prince had welcomed them. Once she and her young son arrived, she took off all the security spells and charms that made Muggles remember pressing, important phone calls should they linger too long in front of the cottage. All the windows were thrown open and they spent a great deal of time in the front garden, and as neighbors passed she greeted them with a smile and a wave, and encouraged him to do the same. Severus remembered, with something almost resembling a smile, that the neighbors always seemed more keen to come around at dinnertime, or when they saw her putting a tray of cookies out to cool on the window sil.

She had been a spectacular cook, a talent that was only evident when they were away from his father. She bloomed like night-jasmine when they were away from Tobias. You could see it in her face, feel it in hands that were gentle, not hesitant, and taste it in the magnificent meals she prepared. Curries, puddings, great towering cakes -- fish and chips made from the morning catch bought at market. At night they would lie side by side in the small bed reading old books until he was too tired to keep his eyes open; and then she would shake him gently and direct him up the wooden ladder that lead to the tiny loft-attic bedroom. From his window; a breathtaking, glorious vision of the sea and the stars.

He felt a twisted sort of pressure in his throat, and his eyes were burning.

The worst part about it was the sense of betrayal he felt when they went back home. Gone was his warm, rosy-cheeked mother, moving with kind, quiet grace; in her place was a hollow slip of a human, a living ghost. The walking dead; she seemed not-there, her eyes bereft of light and laughter. No reading books together, no eating raspberry tarts straight out of the pan, no kisses goodnight. Only silence and shouting in varying intervals, while he tried his hardest to disappear.

He flicked his wand fiercely at the stove, which was already gleaming as bright as a diamond with cleanliness.

It occured to him then that he hadn't eaten anything since his meager breakfast of tea and toast grabbed hastily at a Muggle diner that morning. It seemed a lifetime ago, didn't it? Predictably, the cupboards were bare. He turned to observe the girl out of the corner of his eye. He wasn't so concerned about his own appetite; food often felt like a nuisance, which was why he had a tendency to go a bit thin in the summer. But now he had someone _else_ to look out for. He ground his teeth against this revelation, and wondered if she would sleep through a trip to the market.

- - -

She dreamt of a pain beyond measure. She tried to writhe against it but could not; it was though she was anchored in the empty space...in her mind's eye she turned, and saw some strange smoke-like blackness curling towards her. She could not move, could not speak as it slithered over her shoulders, her neck -- her face, she gasped and choked as it filled her mouth. But the worst -- the most horrifying -- was that she felt it pierce through her chest and into her heart like a spear.

At once a calmness stole over her. The calm of death, of winter, of silence, of stone. Her heart felt heavy, solid, like a block of ice radiating numbness from her core. She did not feel pain anymore -- save a few brief, jarring flashes -- these the darkness chased away with a hiss.

If she struggled, she was only gripped more tightly; if she submitted, the invasion deepened. She knew it would consume her soon -- there would be no part of her that was not touched by darkness. Would she succumb? Would she fight? Would she...

Implacably, and without warning, a fragrant smell penetrated the stillness.

She began the journey away from sleep as one who is crawling from a grave. The silent smothering thing tried to keep her, but the pull of warmth -- of delicious smells and the soft clink of cutlery -- of _life -- _pulled more gently, with more caution, more care. She rose away from the dream, and slowly opened her eyes.

Snape stiffened as he felt her presence. He didn't hear her footsteps or breathing; merely by association she had become adept at practicing the art of silence, so it was only the sudden feeling of no-longer-alone that made him pause in flipping the egg that was sizzling in the ancient cast iron skillet.

"Good Evening," he addressed her without turning. He felt her start at the sound of his voice.

"I had a dream," she offered after a moment. He heard the scraping of chair legs against the newly dust-free floor, heard the whisper of her settling her slight bulk into the chair.

Snape did not respond, but she appeared unaffected.

"It was dark, and the dark was eating me up. But it felt kind of good." She shook her head, "And bad at the same time. It saved me," A long pause, "And it was killing me, too."

"Hmph," said Snape. He wished she didn't talk quite so much like a child.

"What is that?"

"An egg," he said, "And some sausage and mushrooms."

"It smells really _good," _she said.

Snape slid the egg onto a plate already half-full with neatly browned sausage and fragrant mushrooms. He set the plate down in front of her and turned back to retrieve his own. When he turned around again, he grimaced; she had a sausage anchored in one fist and was busy tossing mushrooms into her mouth, her fingers already shiny with grease. Was he _really _going to have to teach her how to use a knife and fork?

Then again, did it matter? He settled down in front of her and chose to focus on his own food rather than point out her lack of table manners. The sounds of her chewing rudely with her mouth wide open and noisily gulping her tea were a bit harder to ignore.

"Look here, child," he said, holding his fork delicately between thumb and forefinger. He wagged it in front of her nose. "And close your mouth when you chew."

She glared at him around a fistful of egg and let the slimy yellow stuff splat back on to the plate.

"Disgusting," he observed.

Very slowly, her eyes on him the entire time, she picked up her fork and started methodically stabbing at her food.

"Ah," he said, "So you aren't a complete barbarian."

"_You _are," she said sulkily, completely affronted by his insistence on utensils.

"A keen observation," he replied. "Eat your food like a good little girl."

A moment of silence free of the sounds of her chewing.

"I'm _not _a good little girl," she said quietly. Without prompting, she wiped her hands on her napkin and placed them carefully in her lap. She did not look as petulant as her voice suggested. "I've done bad things." She raised her eyes to him and he went still, knowing from what little experience he had with her that stillness and calm was to be more feared than a tantrum.

"Yes, you have." He found that his appetite had gone. "Do you know why you do them?"

"No," a pause, "Well, sometimes. Sometimes I forget what's happening, and I wake up and it's...I just know I've done a bad thing. And sometimes..." With this she gripped her fork tightly, and he did not like the flash of heat that passed across her gaze, "Sometimes I _want _to. I like it."

"Indeed," was Snape's only response. He did not want to encourage her confession to the point of condoning her behavior, nor did he want to frighten her away from disclosing information that might help him control her.

"Mostly it's on accident," she said. "I can't help it. Something frightens me, or makes me mad, and I just...I just let it take me for a while. It's easier than fighting. It doesn't hurt as bad."

She looked squarely at him, her pale brows knitted over stormy eyes. Her bottom lips thrust out.

"I hurt _all _the time," she said softly, and he knew that she wasn't speaking in the typical exaggerated fashion of children. For the first time he felt a surprising flash of pity. Imagine, the long-suffering, friendless, homeless Potions Master feeling pity for another creature! She was truly a pathetic soul to illicit such a feeling from one so far down the scale.

"I..." He couldn't believe he was about to say this, "I am going to help you."

"Why? Nobody else could," she frowned, struggling to piece together some distant shards of memory that refused to adhere together, "The darkness ate them all up."

Snape recalled with sudden force the strange disappearances of half a dozen St. Mungo's healers over a five or six year period, some fifteen years ago.

"You need sleep," he said.

"I don't want to," she replied.

"Very well, but you will lie in bed quietly all the same," he retorted. To his utter astonishment, she gave a defeated sigh.

A flick of his wand and the dishes were cleared. He lead her through the tiny parlor into the bedroom, then motioned to the ladder tucked away behind the towering armoire.

"You'll sleep up there," he said.

"Good night, Mister Snape," she said politely. In a comically out of place gesture, she spread her thin skirt and dropped a half-curtsy. Damnable Malfoy manners.

"Good night, Ariadne," he returned. She turned away and climbed up the ladder into the loft. He heard her soft pattering footsteps above him and the creak of ancient bedsprings, and then he heard no more.


	7. Wept and Prayed

A/N: You know you're taking too long in between updates when you have to consult your own writing to remember what the heck is going on...sorry to those who are hanging in there with me; I hope you're still out there! This chapter proves, despite what I said before, that this is going to be a whopper. I can't seem to write anything small anymore.

Nocturne: Wept and Prayed

_Insist that I must be alone; no, not alone, _alone_ --_

_you cannot understand, cannot atone._

R.E.R.

- - -

Snape woke to the sound of retching in the darkness. Jarred and disoriented, he sat up in bed and searched the gray-blue shadows; no, not his chair, where was the bookshelf? Where was the blackened hearth? What was this narrow bed, strange but oddly familiar, so soft that the sides rolled in on him and he sank into the mattress?

The recognition of distant waves crashing against the rugged cliffs of Brindle brought him back, and as his eyes adjusted he knew ths place, and was struck with the odd feeling that _this _was home. The dissolution of panic did not, unfortunately, solve the problem of someone throwing up noisily in the bathroom. The door was ajar, and a fluttering heartbeat of candlelight splashed against the bedroom wall.

In retrospect, feeding her eggs and sausage and mushrooms had probably been a poor decision. He wasn't sure what she'd been eating to stay alive down there, but he could very well guess that neither of the Malfoy elders had felt inclined to make sure their banished daughter got a hearty breakfast. Or lunch or supper, for that matter.

"Ariadne," he said. The coughing and sputtering stopped.

"I don't feel well."

"So I surmised," said Snape. With a repressed groan, he tossed back the blankets and approached the bathroom.

It certainly smelled like sick. Ariadne had her forehead resting on the toilet, arms listlessly draped over the sides of the bowl, with fingers clutching the seat on either side. Her birch-twig legs were curled up underneath her. About half of her tangled hair had disappeared into the toilet bowl. She gave him a miserable look, then leaned in and threw up again.

"Ah..." said Snape, "I'll...make some tea."

He hurried out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. The small round window afforded a classic view of the wide black sea stretching out to the equally dark horizon, but Snape didn't notice it. He was rummaging through his just-bought items to find the rose and mint tea he'd bought. Shame they weren't at Spinner's End; he could have brewed up his own settling serum in minutes. Tea would have to suffice for now. As he set the kettle on the stove and lit the burner with his wand, he heard the creak and rattle of the water-pipes. Perhaps she was finally finished.

"Mister Snape?" She called from the back. He turned and saw her hovering at the door, candle in hand. "I will have a bath now."

"Very well," he said, resigning himself to the fact that he probably wouldn't be going back to sleep any time soon. He turned back to the stove.

"I need a towel," she said after a moment or two, when he thought she'd gone.

"In the wardrobe," he replied, and then remembering that his mother had probably sealed the thing to keep out the moisture. "I'll get it."

He swept into the bedroom, noting that she still instinctually shrank away when he approached too quickly. She stuck herself around the side of the armoire, peering out at him from beneath her filthy hair. A breath of dusty, long-trapped air wafted out of the opened wardrobe. The towels and rain-jackets were still in good condition, Snape noted, smirking at the improbably small set of galoshes leaning tiredly against his mother's larger ones.

"You're not old," said Ariadne, as though she were picking up the end of an argument. Snape, one brow set high in his forehead, handed her the towel.

"No?" he asked. She shook her head and slipped into the bathroom.

"Nope. I remember you seemed old then...you don't seem as old now." Her voice bounced lightly against the faded tile in the bathroom. He heard her turn the tap on; the pipes grumbled in protest. After a hesitant moment, the water splashed into the old ceramic tub.

"You're older, too," he said. "That might be why."

"Yeah," she said. "How old am I?"

Snape winced. It was very likely that when he told her how much time had passed since her imprisonment, she might react...unfavorably.

"I believe you're about twenty," he replied carefully. There was a long, long silence, punctuated only by the running water.

"I'm a grown-up?" she asked. Her voice was more incredulous than angry, and Snape let out a hissing breath.

"Ah...technically, yes," He replied. He was not about to tell her that she was an adult. She still had to be reminded how to use a knife and fork. There was no response, only a few quiet rustling noises barely discernible over the water.

"There should be some washing potion-"

"I found it," she sang, sounding remarkably more upbeat. He heard splashing, and a faint exclamation over the heat of the water.

He left her to her ablutions, assuming she had the fortitude not to drown herself in the bathtub. Back in the kitchen, the kettle was just beginning to whistle. He let it reach a strident pitch while he readied the teacups and took out the cream. He sat drinking for a few moments, long pale hands curled around the warm cup, breathing the sharp, bright smell of the mint. After a while, the pipes clanged again and were silent.

For the first time, he looked at the clock on the wall. It was ten past midnight. He rubbed his eyes and sipped his tea. The mint cleared his brain of the remaining shreds of sleep, and he began to worry.

He knew there would be a story in the Daily Prophet the following morning, most likely detailing his violent attack on a bunch of innocent Aurors and his brutal kidnapping of a strange young girl from Malfoy Manor. It might take a few days for someone with a brain to speculate on her identity -- but Narcissa would know in an instant. And how long before they found him? It was not the Ministry he worried about -- he could evade them indefinitely, bumbling fools -- but should Voldemort decide he wanted his favorite minion found...well, it would be no great feat for him.

The fortuitous burning of the Dark Mark could not have collided more perfectly with his thoughts. The teacup clattered onto the saucer and he gripped his arm with one hand, tounge teeth-caught to avoid a gasp at the surprising pain.

He was under explicit orders not to appear before Voldemort in the case of a summons. It was far too risky, and would remain that way until the Ministry fell. They communed very little for that same reason -- no matter the precautions, there was always the chance that one of those Aurors would take half a day off from being an idiot and stumbled upon the secret Floo-network, or found the only remaining shard of mirror in some dank store of questionable ownership.

The mirror was usually the safest unless they were in a place like Malfoy Manor, where the unpredicatble guarding-spells had a tendency to skew the signals of certain magical devices. He released his grip on the Mark and summoned the small shard of mirror from the pocket of his day-robes. It glided silently into the kitchen. Snape saw Voldemort's red eyes glaring out at him before the mirror even landed in his outstretched palm.

"Explain, Snape," said the Dark Lord, his voice rising flat and tinny out of the glass. Snape controlled his face and found himself faced with a very quick decision.

"She escaped, My Lord," he replied.

"Did you know of her before this?"

"Of course not. Would I have kept such a thing from you?" It was a gamble, hinting at her dubious gifts. But surely he knew -- he would have tormented or frightened it out of Narcissa with very little effort. She could shield her mind from no-one.

"No, you would not. Find her and destroy her. Lucius showed me, once, in an Imago, what she can do. She is a liability."

"I will find her, of course." Snape paused -- it was a long shot, but... "Perhaps if I should find her, Lord, I would not kill her, but bring her to you to use as you saw fit?"

"I do not think she would be compliant for me," he said with a twisted sort of smile. His gaze shifted for a moment, and he hissed something in Parseltongue.

"Find her," he said again. "You will tell me when she is dead."

Snape nodded tersely, and in the next moment the glass showed only his own pallid reflection.

Well, that was that, then. By morning he would have half the Ministry's force on his tail, and Voldemort keeping track of his movement. The cottage wasn't Unplottable. It had no reason to be.

Which meant what? It would be one thing to hop from place to place himself, evading the Aurors on his own. He could spend an evening at any Muggle inn or hotel, he could hole up in abandoned cottages along the countryside, he could sleep a night in an ancient castle slowly submitting to the ravages of time. But now he had this...this _girl _to care for, to conceal even more completely than he concealed himself. Should someone catch a glimpse of him with her in tow, and the word reached his master...

And aside from _that, _she could barely be trusted not to throttle him in his sleep, much less behave herself around real people.

Resentment burned through his confusion; resentment at that blasted Potter, at Albus and his incomprehensible clues, at his own inability to recall what exactly it was about the girl that still niggled at his brain and refused to go away. He was tired of thinking; he was _tired. _They had a day here, perhaps two, perhaps a week. The Dark Lord had enough in play already to allow this pesky Malfoy girl to slip his mind for several days. And then Severus would have time...

He was suddenly aware of a voice drifting in from the bedroom. It was quick, repetitive, droning, as though it recited...

Snape bolted out of his chair, tea forgotten.

"Come away O human child, come away o human child, o human child, to the woods and waters wild, waters wild --"

"Ariadne?" He paused in the bedroom, and sucked in a cautious breath. Well, he could still breathe. Small favors.

"With a fairy, hand in hand in hand in hand."

"Ariadne, _stop." _The bathroom door was closed, but as he tested the knob, he found it unlocked. Slowly, so slowly, he pushed the door in.

The first thing he noted was the smell -- acrid, sharp, like old rust and human warmth. It was not pleasant. He did not see that the tub was full of blood; his gaze was averted -- for her modesty, his dignity -- but soon her rising voice was too strident to bear, and without consent his eyes quit the tile floor and found her in the tub, lolling around in the scarlet water.

"What have you..."

Something warm trickled down his face; his fingers investigated, and came back glistening red. He followed the sticky trail to his ear.

He dragged her, shrieking, from the tub, his eyes clogged and stinging with blood, her scrawny body slippery in his hands. At once, the water went clear again, save a few floating suds and the milky residue of the washing potion.

"Quiet," he said, as the girl moaned on the floor. He did not look at her as he flung the large towel over her trembling form.

"You let it _in," _she sobbed. Snape touched his face again. His hands returned, clean.

"Let what in," he ground out, though he knew.

"The darkness, the bad, bad dark. I'm cold," she said. "Please, please, please."

_There is no cure for what she has, _Snape thought. There was nothing in his extensive knowledge of magical lore that could explain her impossible, deadly madness.

"Off the floor," he said. Was the blood an illusion? Was she injured? Had he not pulled her out, would she have...would _he _have bled to death, collapsed on the floor while she crooned like a feverish child in her gristly bath? If he were not here to witness these things himself, he would have called the teller crazy, and locked him up for good.

She didn't move, so he gathered her up, towel and all, and carried her into the bedroom. He dumped her onto the mattress and quickly threw the covers over her body -- all the way up to the chin, for good measure. Even if he_ had_ been the questionable sort of man who got his jollies wherever he could, he felt no inclination to see her nude.

She shivered still, whispered still, though now without cadence or repetition. Snape scrubbed his bare hands over his face and groaned as he sat gingerly on the edge of the bed.

He needed access to literature, to whatever he could find concerning the effects of curses on unborn children. The Ministry-run library in Diagon alley was out of the question -- even in his best disguise, it would be ten kinds of suicide to try and sneak around in what was now probably a very well-guarded area. He was a man with no allies, no assets, and no ideas.

Ariadne stirred in the bed. He ignored her, mired in his own thoughts. It was not until he felt a cool, small hand on his elbow that he turned to acknowledge the girl.

She stared up at him, and despite her ordeal looked remarkably better than she had before. Her face was clean, at least. Wide eyed, she studied him, her hand still resting on his elbow.

"You're a good man," she said. "I'm sorry if I hurt you."

"I'm not a good man, and it's all right," he replied.

"I don't want to hurt you," she said. "Are you going to help me?"

"It seems I must," he replied.

"Oh, good. He must. He must, must must." She yawned hugely and wiggled under the sheets. Was it worth the trouble to insist that she return to her own bed? Against his own will, he watched her face for a moment, lines and shadows in the moonlight. Despite the starved jawline and prominent cheekbones, he could see the aristocratic slope of the Malfoy nose, and though the lips were pallid and chapped, he recognized the full bow-shaped mouth for which Narcissa had always been so lavishly complimented. She didn't _look _like a raving lunatic, at least not when she was this relaxed. She seemed to have recovered from the ordeal rather swiftly -- and, come to think of it, always did. Her previous bouts of rage, he thought, were more a symptom of fear than madness. That, at least, was a small comfort.

He waited until her breath became even and soft, and then he quietly moved away from the bed and out into the living room. He lit the oil lamps and settled himself into a dusty chair. He thought of lighting a fire as well, to chase away some of the pervasive dampness of the sea air, but it was warm enough that the heat would quickly overpower the small room.

In the quasi-darkness he brooded, his chair on the edge of the quivering golden lamplight. Halfheartedly he considered the books lining the sagging shelves. But these were useless; children's stories, his mother's romance books, a Muggle volume or two from the house's first long-dead occupants. Idly his eyes traced the dusty spines: _Esmerelle's__ Wizard, The __Knarl__ and the __Krup__, A Witch's Guide to __Housekeeping__, Common Country Curses and How to Break Them. _Nothing that would explain how a young woman could bring tears of blood, or turn her fingers into razor-fire, or pull all the air from a man's lungs.

If only there was someone -- anyone -- on the outside that he could trust to bring him books, to help him uncover the truth behind Ariadne's hopeless condition. A scant few months ago, he would have had a safe harbor for her at Number 12 Grimmauld Place, and a host of trained wizards with library access who _wouldn't _be Stupefied on the spot. If Albus had really wanted to save her, why wait until too late to hint at her existence? Why not just...

Now that he thought about it, Dumbledore _had _told him in enough time to effect a rescue before his...demise. And Snape had been to Malfoy Manor several times between the cryptic conversation and that fateful night on the tower, but he had never thought to remember the old wizard's words.

Not for the last time, Snape wished for his stores; specifically for the firewhiskey situated casually between a stack of worn-out cauldrons and cracked potion vials. What he would not give for the numbing burn of alcohol, for the incipient drowsiness and subsequent sleep? Instead he palmed his cheek and sighed, and stared at the empty black mouth of the hearth until his heavy eyes drifted closed.

- - -

The Daily Prophet came to Hermione in a plain brown wrapper and always beat the Muggle newspaper to her parent's doorstep. Her father often showed a passing interest in the goings-on of the Wizarding world, but that morning he declined, being late for work and only half-shaven besides. A much needed storm had stumbled through around midnight and had knocked the power out for just long enough to set all the clocks back a good six hours.

That was one of the things Wizards had on Muggles, Hermione thought as her father finished shaving, watching his faint reflection in the kitchen window -- the clocks _knew _what time it was, rainstorm or not. She sipped her orange juice as she unwrapped the Prophet, eyes scanning past her father's image to see if there were any owl-shaped specks outlined against the post-storm brightness of morning.

"Dear," he called up the stairs, "It's half past eight!"

"Down in a moment," Anne Granger called from the upstairs bathroom. Philip sloughed his razor in the sink and set it on the window sill. Hermione could practically hear her mother admonishing him for it nine hours from now. Soon Rose came clopping down the stairs, still smoothing her mass of damp curls into a low bun at the base of her neck.

"Love, dearest," said her mother, throwing a kiss in her direction. "Remember we're out to dinner with the Robinsons tonight."

"Have a good day, then," said Hermione, only half-hearing her parents' amicable argument as they clattered out of the front door and sped away in her father's car. It was rather uncharacteristic of the Grangers to be anything but punctual, so the entire scene had an air of comedy about it that kept Hermione chuckling until she unfolded the paper. Her smile dissolved in an instant and she swallowed quickly to avoid spewing juice all over the polished kitchen table.

**MURDEROUS PROFESSOR TAKES HOSTAGE!**

_Early yesterday evening, Ministry __Aurors__ traced suspected murderer Severus __Snape__ to the __Malfoy__ family estate in __Wiltshire__. The former Hogwarts Professor was detected in a __Locarium__ set up by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement as a precaution when alleged Death Eater Lucius __Malfoy__ was placed under arrest and sent to __Azkaban__._

_"It's quite lucky someone was watching," said an unnamed Ministry official. "__Locarium's__ no good if no-one's around to see it go off."_

_Aurors__ waited until dusk and then invaded the manor, deflecting the old warding-spells with advanced __counterspelling__. They found upon inspection two dead House Elves that appeared to have been killed by the Unforgivable __Avada__ Kedavra__ curse._

_The team of __Aurors__ found __Snape__ in a third-floor bedroom, where he appeared to be restraining a young woman. __Snape __Disapparated__ with his hostage before the __Aurors__ could apprehend him._

_"We're at a loss as to who she might be," said Goddard Townsend, the leader of the __Auror__ team that invaded the manor._

_The young woman was described as very thin, with pale blonde hair and extremely fair skin. She is suspected to be around thirteen or fourteen. Anyone with any information as to either her identity or the whereabouts of this criminal should contact the Department of..._

Hermione set the paper down, and before she could fully process what she had read, the hearth in her parents' parlour flared green. She dashed from the kitchen and fell to her knees to see Ron's sleep-rumpled visage staring out at her.

"Did you --"

"I just read --"

"Do you think Harry..?"

"He's still asleep --"

Ron turned around; in the fire Hermione was afforded a momentary view of his ear.

"He's come down," said Ron through clenched teeth, "What should I do?"

"Oh, you can't hide it from him," said Hermione practically, "And besides, it doesn't sound like anyone we know, does it?"

"I'll be back," said Ron. "Stay close by, all right?" He disappeared from the flames.

Knowing it wouldn't be long before Ron popped back in again, Hermione thanked her stars (and not for the last time) that she had been canny enough to convince both Ministry officials and her parents that it was in everyone's best interest to connect their fireplace to the Floo network. It was ever so much faster than an Owl, and even though they had placed travel-restrictions on the connection, it still made her feel much more united with the world she grudgingly left each summer. In two weeks she would sojourn to the Burrow for Bill and Fleur's wedding, but the days leading up to it did have a tendency to drag on and on. She loved her parents, truly, but the past six years had changed her beyond recall, and she could not find solace in the simple, quiet, predictable life they led. Not anymore.

Thing like this -- like finding out that one of their (admittedly reviled) Professors was not only a murderer, but a kidnapper to boot -- made her feel even more disconnected with the Muggle world. That poor girl...

She retrieved the paper and re-read it while she waited for Ron. She read slowly this time, and continued past the line about contacting the Ministry should one see any signs of Severus Snape or his victim. She found it odd that there had been two dead House Elves, even after her initial disgust at the idea that someone would hurt something so defenseless. The thing was, it didn't seem...well, not that she _knew _him, after all, none of them did -- but it didn't really seem a Snape-like thing to do. Although anyone who could find it in himself to slay Albus Dumbledore would probably not think twice about offing a couple of House Elves. The paper didn't say where they had been found. And what was Snape doing at the Malfoys' anyway, with Lucius in Azkaban?

The whole thing seemed off, at second examination. She wasn't sure why, and she _was _sure that Ron and Harry would ream her sideways for not jumping immediately on the Snape-is-a-total-nutter train.

Accompanying that thought was a flash of green light, and this time two sleepy boy-faces appeared in the flames, jostling for position.

"Dad left straight off after he read it," Ron said. "He expects it's some poor Muggle-born that was locked in the Malfoy's torture chambers. Probably trying to get her out of there before the Ministry raided the manor."

"That doesn't make any sense," said Harry, "I told him that the Prophet regularly reports on any missing people, and you'd bet they would know who she was if she'd gone missing before this."

"Right, Harry," said Hermione. "It said she was skinny and pale with blonde hair. Anyone we know look like that?"

"Sounds like a bloody Malfoy," Ron grumbled, "Maybe it was Draco, and they only _thought _it was a thirteen year old girl."

"Oh, what a time to joke, Ronald," said Hermione. "I'm rather surprised Snape allowed himself to be seen. I thought him craftier than that, really."

"He's not crafty, he's evil," said Harry. His face was pinched, and Hermioned could read the darkness in his eyes even through the greenish hues of flame. "It was probably just some Muggle he kidnapped so he could --"

"Right, Harry, let's be reasonable," Hermione said swiftly. "What are we supposed to do about it? It's far too dangerous for Harry -- for _any _of us to be running around right now. And Harry...you've got bigger things to be looking for, don't you?"

Ron and Harry exchanged a look, and Harry's face went from pinched to frighteningly calm.

"You're right, Hermione. We'll just let Snape murder to his heart's content. I'm sure that's what...what _he _would have wanted."

Dumbledore's name hung, unspoken, in the morning stillness. Down the street, Hermione heard the neighbor's wretched Pomeranian, Ella, yapping furiously at the postman. She looked down at her hands.

"Harry," she said quietly, "I understand, I really do. But there's nothing we can do, is there? In times like these there are always..."

"Sacrifices?" Harry seethed. Hermione nodded, looking helplessly at Ron.

"I...think she's right, mate," said Ron. "You've got those...those things to look for, and not very much time to look for them. Maybe she was just...a friend," he finished lamely. Harry was silent, and then at once he withdrew his head from the fire, leaving Ron and Hermione alone.

"Well..."

"Right," said Hermione. "I'll see...I mean, I'll do a bit of research, see if I can find anything on the Muggle news about a missing girl. Maybe if I find something, I can..."

"He'll be all right," said Ron. "He just...well, you know how he is. Wants to save everyone."

Hermione suspected that it might have a bit more to do with hating Snape than saving a young girl's life, but she did not give voice to her opinion.

"I'll let you know if I come across anything," she finished. "Keep an eye on him, please, Ronald."

"All right, all right," said Ron. "See you in a couple weeks."

He disappeared, and the hearth was empty. Hermione shook her head and dusted her knees as she rose. How was it that no matter the crisis, they always seemed to find themselves inexorably entwined with it? She took the Prophet back into the kitchen and absently gulped down the rest of her juice and the toast that had gone cold. While rinsing her dishes, she scanned the skyline again for signs of owl-wings, even though in her experience they always had a tendency to show up just as she was opening the paper.

An internship with the Wizards' Society of Visionaries (she had initially balked at the exclusivity of the word "Wizard," wondering why they so blatantly left out the feminine; Professor McGonagall had explained to her that the legislative changes required to alter the 600-year old society's title would take up the rest of her life, were she to tackle it) was a coveted spot granted only to one student every twenty years, one from each from the three preeminent Wizarding schools. Hermione had come across the only bit of information she could find on the organization back in her third year. Three years later she had been notified by owl of her eligibility to apply for the internship, and had been urged by Mcgonagall, despite the current state of affairs, to follow through with the invitation.

From the very little she had read, joining the Society afforded one privileges that were still unknown to the common Witch or Wizard. Suffice it to say that there was a fierce sort of loyalty among its members; from what Hermione understood, they were in some ways above the law -- or, rather, that no matter the crime, they would always be welcomed back into the arms of their brethren. The information to which they were party, so she surmised, was above and beyond the confines of light or dark magic, fair Wizard or foul. Their love was of knowledge, of truth, of discovery -- just thinking about it made Hermione's scalp tingle. Despite the feeling of impending doom that hovered over her every waking moment, this was one bright spot in her constant fretting. When the war was over...

She had sent her finished application -- surprisingly brief, consisting of only a single question: "What is knowledge without truth?" -- only days before term ended, days before Dumbledore fell. There was no indication of how long it would take to review her application, but she had taken to watching the sky every day, just in case.

_They _would know who the missing girl was, or at least how to find her. The idea that there was something even more mysterious and secretive than the world she had only met six years prior appealed greatly to Hermione -- and there was a comfort in it, too, a comfort knowing that some things were larger and more permanent than the present.

Realizing she had been staring out of the window for a good fifteen minutes, Hermione shook herself and turned back into the interior of the kitchen. There was plenty for her to do today, and all of it far more productive than daydreaming about secret boys' clubs.

She almost missed the envelope, merely because it was sitting on the hall table with the rest of the mail. Well, it wasn't sitting on the table, rather it floated a few inches above it; a square silver envelope, stamped and sealed with wax. Hermione approached, wondering how an owl had managed to get in and out without her noticing, and with a floating letter to top it off. She plucked it from the air and examined the seal.

Her heart galloped in her chest -- pressed into the blue wax was a simple "V", its lines a curling slightly outward at each point. Though she did not recognized the symbol, she could venture a fair guess as to where it came from. With trembling hands she broke the seal -- at once both envelope and wax dissolved into thin air, leaving her with only the contents: a square card the color of morning, with silver ink marching in a proud, oddly familiar hand. Three lines, nothing more...  
_  
Hermione Jean Granger,_

_You are hereby accepted into the Wizar__d__s__'__ Society of Visionaries._

_Congratulations._


	8. evenings, mornings, afternoons

Nocturne: evenings, mornings, afternoons

A/N: I have absolutely no idea why I started working on this again, but if you're still reading, let me know!  
_  
Who hath desired the Sea? - the immense and contemptuous surges?  
The shudder, the stumble, the swerve, as the star-stabbing bow-sprit emerges?_

Rudyard Kipling

Snape remembered the summer storms of his youth - the wild lashing of the sea against the rocks, the plumes of spray rising high into the tossing wind; the silver-white lightning that made everything look enormous and terrifying. He remembered the summer that the roof caved in over his bed. One minute he had been huddled beneath the warm blankets, counting the breathless moments of silence between the flash and the noise, and the next he was scrambling out of the bed, as it felt like someone had dumped a bucket of icy water square on top of his head. The thundering crash had woken his mother, who had the roof and the room back to normal in moments. But the storm raged on outside, and Severus, who might have been five or six at the time, from that point on refused to sleep in the upstairs bedroom if the evening sky so much as suggested the intent to cloud over at moonrise.

He supposed it was the faint memory of his own fear that made him check the bedroom when the first peal of thunder grumbled out over the water and made the windows vibrate. She slept soundly, unmoving, and he closed the door quickly. She had all but kicked the covers off in some restless dream, and he had seen a little more leg and belly than he could stomach.

The darkness of the storm belied the hour - it was nearly nine o'clock. No wonder he felt stiff and cold. His reluctance to build a fire last night proved detrimental in the morning; the wind and the rain took all the heat of of the summer air, and it was chilly in the small cottage.

Pitching back through thin, scattered memory, he recalled that morning-storms usually portended a string of stormy days, with only a few breaks in between squalls to allow the sun to struggle through and a few ignorant tourists to think it was time to set up shop on the beach. Parting the curtains, he assessed the clouds stretching out over the water. No end in sight, and they were the somber slate-gray color that told Snape they meant to settle in and stick around for a while.

He felt an irrational flush of relief. The weather gave him an excuse to lie low for as long as it persisted. It was no good trying to find a new hiding place that would both keep them safe and fool Voldemort into thinking he was actually looking for her - not even the best wizard could convince nature to cooperate with his own desires. Yes, it made sense. They would stay until the storm broke for good; Voldemort he could beg off by saying that he was being tailed by Aurors - it had worked before, when he was stretched too thin between alliances, and the Order required his services just as desperately as the Death Eaters. A believable tale indeed - the Dark Lord would only need to glance at the cover of the Daily Prophet for confirmation.

Perhaps it was the smallness of the place; perhaps it was the memories, bittersweet as they were - perhaps it was the storm; perhaps it was her, taking up enough space in his mind to drown the guilt - but he felt peaceful for once, for a moment. He didn't have to do anything _right now, _and that made him...

...Happy. He scowled and went into the kitchen.

Ariadne seemed to have a keen nose for food; no sooner had he thrown the first sausage in the skillet did he hear the whisper of bare feet against the floor. Mercifully, she was dressed - her own slip, clean from the previous evening - and, incredibly, his cloak. It swallowed her whole and dragged the ground.

"It's..." she paused and searched for the word, eyes screwed shut, "raining."

"Indeed it is," said Snape. "May I ask why you are wearing my cloak?"

"I like the way it smells," she said, grabbing a fistful of fabric and burying her face in the folds. She dropped it after a moment and approached the skillet, peering over his shoulder. He could not help but notice that, despite her proximity, she took every caution to ensure that no part of her body touched his; when he glanced back to look at her he saw her stretched up on her toes, fingers curled into arching claws over the slope of his shoulder, hovering, her spine bowed into an awkward curve.

"Sausage?" she asked, testing the word. It sounded a little strange in her mouth.

"Yes, but not for you," he replied. He gave the skillet a quick shake, watching the sizzling edges of the sausages to make sure they weren't too close to burning. The movement brought his shoulder to brush unintentionally against the tips of her fingers. She shuddered and stepped back, he shook his head and gestured to the pot of porridge simmering on the backburner. "I think it's best if you start with something a bit less likely to wake me up in the middle of the night."

"But I want some," she said, with a practicality that intimated the end of the matter. Snape shook his head.

"Absolutely not. Not until you can prove your ability to digest food like a normal person."

"Pleeeease," she wheedled. He had absolutely no doubt that that very voice had probably worked on Lucius and Narcissa a hundred times. He was not so easily swayed.

"No. Stop acting like a child. Sit down and I'll-"

Before he could stop her, she reached a hand beneath his arm and made to snatch one of the sizzling sausages out of the pan. Predictably, she started shrieking.

"Stupid little girl," he muttered as she backed away from the stove like a wounded animal, clutching her right hand to her breast. He shook his head and laid the spatula down and retrieved his wand. As he approached her, she squashed herself even tighter into the corner, shaking her head violently. Suddenly he didn't like the look in her eyes.

"Ariadne," he said carefully. "If you give me your hand, I'll make it stop hurting."

"GO AWAY!" she screamed, her eyes bright and unfocused. Snape winced at the stridence of her tone, and backed out of the way just in time to dodge a well-aimed kick. God, help him.

"Very well," he said. He turned back to the stove, wondering if this gamble would pay off, or if he needed to step back from the skillet to avoid getting blood on his breakfast. She continued to heave in the corner for another minute or two, and then slowly quieted - though she still whimpered, the wildness was gone from her voice. Snape sat down at the table with his food, continuing to ignore her. Presently he heard a shuffle-scraping sound behind him, and from his periphery could see her scooting across the floor, hand still cradled like an injured bird. She paused next to his chair. He started to eat. After a moment, an open palm, marked with angry red welts at each fingertip as well as a curved line on the wrist, crept into his lap, floating and trembling just an inch or two above his legs.

"Yes?" he asked as he sipped his tea.

"Fix it," she said, her voice light and pitiful.

"Ask me properly. You are not a child."

"Mister Snape, will you please fix my hand, sir?"

She couldn't keep the pain out of her voice - and he knew from experience just how agonizing a normal, everyday burn could be. Sometimes, Voldemort preferred lit candles to lit wand-tips - it _keeps a wizard honest, _he used to say, impassively watching flesh bubble and blacken beneath the pallid yellow-white flame.

"I will," he replied. He took his wand out - she cringed away from it, but her hand noticed her fear of the wand, but did not comment.

He whispered the spell, and she withdrew the no-longer-injured appendage.

"I forgot they did good things," she said softly. It took a moment for Snape to realize what she was talking about.

"The wand?" he asked.

"Yeah. I forgot about the good things." She gathered herself up off the floor, absently curling and uncurling the fingers of her healed hand.

"Did you ever use one?" he asked. Once she was seated, he fixed her a small bowl of porridge from the pot and set it down. Having learned from her mistake, he saw her eye the steam coming from the bowl and sit back, waiting for it to cool.

"Yeah. It was not good," she said. "I think..." She shook her head and rubbed her balled fists against her eyes, trying to squeeze the memory out. "I think I hurt mother real bad one time."

"Hm," said Snape. Well, it made sense - if on her own, with no vector, she was still able to conjure such wicked power, imagine what the focused intent of a wand could do. He did wonder why anyone would dare give a wand to a young child anyway - he had heard of perfectly normal children getting a hold of their parents' wands and blasting half the house away, or coming up minus several fingers.

"Why did they give you a wand, Ariadne? You were very young."

She shrugged and dipped her spoon in her porridge, watching as it glopped back into the bowl. "I dunno."

"You don't know, or you don't remember?"

"Don't remember," she said, her voice suddenly hostile. She glared at him over the table; he was a bit shocked by the intensity of her gaze.

"Don't remember, _don't remember, DON'T REMEMBER!" _

He held out his hand.

"Enough," he warned. "You don't have to tell me."

"I WON'T," she said, though her shout was less fervent this time. She took a bite of the porridge, and thankfully had the sense to keep her mouth closed until she had swallowed. "Is this where I'm going to live now?" She was back to sounding perfectly calm, and if it weren't for the child-like structure of her sentences, he might have thought her a rational adult holding a pleasant conversation over breakfast.

"For a while," Snape replied, relieved that she had provided her own redirection.

"Good," she said. "I like it here."

"So do I," said Snape, surprising himself by meaning it.

"What do you mean, _you'll be out of touch _for a while?"

Hermione sucked in a breath and smiled, trying hard to keep her expression benign.

"What I said, Ron. My mum and dad have been planning this holiday for months."

"Why didn't you say anything before?"

"Well things have been a little...up in the air, haven't they? Honestly it just slipped my mind."

Ron's snort of disgust was audible even through the crackling of the fire, but the resignation in his eyes was enough to convey his begrudging acceptance of her answer. Looking somewhat like a dog who has been shut out of the house for the fourth night in a row, he waited a few moments, seemingly gathering his thoughts before responding.

"Harry's not going to like it either. With everything that's been going on lately..."

"I can't help it. I've got to go. I don't know how much time..."

She let her words float through the air; the conclusion she would allow Ron to draw himself. She didn't know how much time she had left with her parents.

"Tonight?"

"Er, yes. This evening, when they come home from work. We're taking a train out of King's Cross."

This part felt a little less like it was being dragged out of her mouth, as at the very least there was some modicum of truth wedged inside the words. Ron made another noise and then his head bobbed slightly with the unseen motion of shrugging shoulders.

"You sound like you've made up your mind, so I guess I'll just tell Harry when he gets back. He's gone out flying while Mum's with Ginny at the market. He doesn't dare when she's around."

"I'll come through again this evening, before we say goodbye." She had to catch her tongue in her teeth to counter the gut-twisting pain of the lie.

"Right," said Ron, sounding rather dull. "Talk to you later, then."

Hermione sat back from the hearth, watching as the flames lost their verdant edge, fading into yellow petals with blue hearts that snapped and hissed along the ragged chunks of wood. For a while she sat still, too close to the fire that emanated thoroughly unnecessary heat into the already warm room. She lifted her hand and rubbed the back of her neck, and her palm came back damp with sweat.

Finally she unfolded herself and dusted the ashes from her knees. To the left of the hearth, just outside of Ron's line of vision, sat her traveling bag, a purple and green plaid canvas thing that usually didn't accompany her to Hogwarts. She drew in another steadying breath and pushed the bag aside for a moment so she could join it on her father's favorite chair. She reached into the front zippered pocket and pulled the letter out again, the one that had arrived mere moments after the first.

_Dear Miss Granger,_

_Should you wish to be permanently indicted into the Visionaries, you must make the journey to our headquarters on the coast. You may not use Apparition, Floo Powder, Vanishing Cabinets or any other manner of magical travel._

_There is a train that leaves today at 1:00 pm from platform 11 and 1/2. You may access this platform in the same manner as the one you use to board the Hogwarts Express.  
_  
_You will take this train to the last stop and await further instructions. It goes without saying that you must keep your destination a secret.  
_  
_We look forward to your arrival._

She tucked the letter away, feeling the same mixture of excitement, apprehension and terror that had nearly made her sick only a few moments before Ron popped back up in the fireplace. It really was mad, wasn't it? To trust something like this, something that could so easily be a trick, a way to lure her out of the safety of her parents home, to snatch her up and use her as bait for The Boy Who Lived. Once again she felt the inexorable pounding her her heart, the breath deserting her lungs. Mad, mad, mad.

But beneath that - beneath the logic and the guilt, beneath the idea that she had no business deserting her friends at a time like this - came the same pervasive thought, so bold and vivid that it might have been stamped in brass along the darker regions of her mind.

_I deserve this._

She deserved something that was exclusively hers, something that Ron or Harry or Voldemort or Dumbledore could not touch, could not use to their own ends.

Shouldering her bag, she ignored the vicious tremble that overtook her legs as she stood.

_I deserve this._

_- - -  
_  
After she finished eating, Ariadne fell immediately asleep. Nearly at the table, in fact; Severus found himself dragging her as far as the tiny sitting room so she could be deposited on the narrow sofa. She refused the moth-eaten blanket, insisting instead on wrapping his cloak around herself until she resembled a tow-headed caterpillar swathed in a midnight cocoon.

While she slept, Snape took stock of their stores. There wasn't any firewood left, only a nugget or two of truly ancient tinder peeking out from beneath the grate, mostly obscured by a prodigious blanket of white ash. And while it was almost warm during the day, he did not wish to spend another evening shivering. A glance at the girl on the sofa yielded the knowledge that she, too, suffered the effects of the cold; wrapped in his cloak as she was, and sleeping soundly, now and then he saw her body tense and release, an unconscious effort to stave off the chill.

As if the weight of his gaze had somehow penetrated the walls of her dreams, she flinched and shifted, cringing away from whatever horrors plagued her in the solace of sleep. He sent his eyes over to the small round window, lashed with rain and shuddering with the force of the wind. Weather or no, he'd have to make a trip out today for wood and food. Perhaps it would be best to wait, though, an hour or two at least, just to see if the storm had any intention of breaking for a few minutes.

Focusing on the barest needs for survival was the most relaxing thing Snape could recall doing in recent memory. After all, it wasn't as if he spent his evenings in quiet meditation with a soothing cup of tea and a book. Did he rest at all during the school year? No, not when there were classes during the day and Summonings at night, or secret roof-top meetings with Dumbledore, or a terse, compulsory meeting at Grimmauld place. Sometimes he managed to purloin an hour, perhaps two, in the thin pink hours before dawn, but always he felt guilty when he woke up, heart hammering, eyes already threaded with red, wondering what he had missed or forgotten.

Even now sleep was a far away friend with no intentions of visiting. He settled himself into the chair across from the imaginary fire and summoned a few books from the shelf, now dust-free, even if it did still look very much in danger of collapsing under the weight of age and unread words.

He could stomach the children's stories far better than the romance novels or the pedestrian spell-books. And besides, there was something very calming about the rhythm of the words, structured so simply that they approached a kind of elegance. He sped through _The Siren and the Stone _without much thought or effort, pausing only to wonder at the limp, smudged pages, marked at every corner with child-sized fingerprints. He did not know how many times he had read this particular book - must have been hundreds.

It was the silence that drew him out of the magical land of Azelrun, the absence of the pounding rain and plaintive, persistent wind. If he meant to go out, now was the time. He set his book on the table and surveyed the sea, noting another dark mess of clouds clotting together at the eastern horizon. Between here and there, the sky was broken up with tenative flashes of blue.

After hiding all the knives (and anything else with a remotely pointy edge) he stepped out into the temperate, still-damp front garden, and carefully unleashed every single sealing spell he could remember. It took longer than it should have, for he had to stop every few minutes and glance around for possible onlookers while pretending that he was merely examining the rosebush that had gone feral in his absence. In spite of that, soon there were so many spells tangled together over the cottage that the air around it took on a faint, hazy glow; nothing a Muggle would notice - nothing a wizard would notice either, unless he was looking for it. It just looked like a very specific patch of fog.  
_  
_With a final glance back at the house, he pushed his way through the protesting gate and started on the narrow road towards town.  
_  
_


End file.
